and other important towns were visited.  A trip was also made from Cadiz to Gibraltar by steamer.  After another brief visit to Paris, General Grant went to Ireland, arriving at Dublin January 3, 1879; visited several points of interest in that country, then, by way of London and Paris, went to Marseilles, whence he set sail by way of the Mediterranean Sea and the Suez Canal for India.  He reached Bombay February 13th.  Thence visited Allahabad, Agra and rode on an elephant to Amber; also went to Benares, Delhi.  Calcutta and Rangoon, spent a week in Siam, then went by steamer to China.  After spending some time at Canton, Pekin and other places he went to Japan for a brief visit.  He went to Nagasaki, Tokio and Yokahama, and at last, September 3, 1879, set sail from Tokio on his return to the United States.  September 20th he arrived in the harbor of San Francisco.  After some weeks spent in visiting the points of interest in California and Oregon he returned to his home in the Eastern States.

HISTORY OF VASSAR COLLEGE.—–­ Vassar College is on the east bank of the Hudson, near Poughkeepsie, N.Y.  It was founded in 1861.  In that year Matthew Vassar, a wealthy brewer of Poughkeepsie, gave to an incorporated board of trustees the sum of $108,000 and 200 acres of land for the endowment of a college for women.  The building was constructed from plans approved by him, at a cost of about $200,000.  The college was opened in September, 1865, with eight professors and twenty other instructors, and 300 students.  The first president of the college was Professor Milo P. Jewett; the second Dr. John H. Raymond; the third the Rev. Samuel Caldwell.  The college has a fine library, with scientific apparatus and a museum of natural history specimens.

THE ORIGINS OF CHESS.—­So ancient is chess, the most purely intellectual of games, that its origin is wrapped in mystery.  The Hindoos say that it wad the invention of an astronomer, who lived more than 5,000 years ago, and was possessed of supernatural knowledge and acuteness.  Greek historians assert that the game was invented by Palamedes to beguile the tedium of the siege of Troy.  The Arab legend is that it was devised for the instruction of a young despot, by his father, a learned Brahman, to teach the youth that a king, no matter how powerful, was dependent upon his subjects for safety.  The probability is that the game was the invention of some military genius for the purpose of illustrating the art of war.  There is no doubt, that it originated in India, for a game called by the Sanskrit name of Cheturanga—­which in most essential points strongly resembles modern chess, and was unquestionably the parent of the latter game—­is mentioned in Oriental literature as in use fully 2,000 years before the Christian area.  In its gradual diffusion over the world the game has undergone many modifications and changes, but marked resemblances to the early Indian game are still to be found in it.  From India, chess spread into Persia, and thence into Arabia, and the Arabs took it to Spain and the rest of Western Europe.