head, and pronounces the word echec (check) when necessary. {*3} If a false move be made by his antagonist, he raps briskly on the box with the fingers of his right hand, shakes his head roughly, and replacing the piece falsely moved, in its former situation, assumes the next move himself.  Upon beating the game, he waves his head with an air of triumph, looks round complacently upon the spectators, and drawing his left arm farther back than usual, suffers his fingers alone to rest upon the cushion.  In general, the Turk is victorious—­once or twice he has been beaten.  The game being ended, Maelzel will again if desired, exhibit the mechanism of the box, in the same manner as before.  The machine is then rolled back, and a curtain hides it from the view of the company.

There have been many attempts at solving the mystery of the Automaton.  The most general opinion in relation to it, an opinion too not unfrequently adopted by men who should have known better, was, as we have before said, that no immediate human agency was employed—­in other words, that the machine was purely a machine and nothing else.  Many, however maintained that the exhibiter himself regulated the movements of the figure by mechanical means operating through the feet of the box.  Others again, spoke confidently of a magnet.  Of the first of these opinions we shall say nothing at present more than we have already said.  In relation to the second it is only necessary to repeat what we have before stated, that the machine is rolled about on castors, and will, at the request of a spectator, be moved to and fro to any portion of the room, even during the progress of a game.  The supposition of the magnet is also untenable—­for if a magnet were the agent, any other magnet in the pocket of a spectator would disarrange the entire mechanism.  The exhibiter, however, will suffer the most powerful loadstone to remain even upon the box during the whole of the exhibition.

The first attempt at a written explanation of the secret, at least the first attempt of which we ourselves have any knowledge, was made in a large pamphlet printed at Paris in 1785.  The author’s hypothesis amounted to this—­that a dwarf actuated the machine.  This dwarf he supposed to conceal himself during the opening of the box by thrusting his legs into two hollow cylinders, which were represented to be (but which are not) among the machinery in the cupboard No.  I, while his body was out of the box entirely, and covered by the drapery of the Turk.  When the doors were shut, the dwarf was enabled to bring his body within the box—­the noise produced by some portion of the machinery allowing him to do so unheard, and also to close the door by which he entered.  The interior of the automaton being then exhibited, and no person discovered, the spectators, says the author of this pamphlet, are satisfied that no one is within any portion of the machine.  This whole hypothesis was too obviously absurd to require comment, or refutation, and accordingly we find that it attracted very little attention.