Note.  The match between La Bourdonnais and McDonnell produced games which for originality, enterprise and spirit have never been surpassed.  They commanded the admiration and enthusiasm of all lovers of chess at the time, besides securing press notice and arousing a taste for its practice, and a genuine emulation never witnessed before this great example, and the appreciation of the games is now as great as ever, and few modern matches can bear comparison with them.

Different versions of the score have appeared; it was probably finally La Bourdonnais 43, McDonnell 29, and draws 13.

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The Chess Congress of the North of Ireland, which will sound yet more familiar to many ears, under the title of the Belfast or Belfast and Holywood Chess Congress (for it is to the spirit and liberality of these two places that the meeting owes its origin) commenced in the Central Hall, Belfast, on September 12th, and concluded with one of Mr. Blackburne’s marvellous blindfold performances on September 24th, an ordinary simultaneous competition of twenty-one games by Mr. Bird, on September 21st, having also apparently afforded some pleasure and satisfaction.

The Belfast meeting must, owing to the originality and enterprise of its conception, and the complete success which has attended it form a unique item in Great Britain’s local chess records, and will not form one of the least interesting and significant features in the national chess history of this generation, for it is the first occasion in the record of the forty-eight counties gatherings held since the first of 1841, in Leeds, that the idea has been conceived of adding a contest between the greatest living masters in the country on terms the most liberal and deeply appreciated.

The proceedings of the Congress, and the scores of the players in the Tournaments have been reported from day to day in the Belfast papers, and the games of the masters with some selected from the amateur handicaps have also been given, and save that the same have been presented without comment on the merits of the play, description, or notes which are found so useful and acceptable to the general reader, otherwise considered, from a purely local point of view, nothing remained to be desired.  From a national chess point of view, however, it seems to have been too lightly regarded by the Press, some trophy in the amateur competitions to commemorate the name of Alexander McDonnell, a native of Belfast, who did more in his time than any other man to uphold British chess reputation, might also not have been inappropriate on such an occasion.  Personally I was surprised that the name of McDonnell did not appear to be more vividly remembered in his native city.