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.

In 1789 a book was published at Dresden by M. I. F. Freyhere in which
another endeavor was made to unravel the mystery. Mr. Freyhere's book
was a pretty large one, and copiously illustrated by colored engravings.
His supposition was that "a well-taught boy very thin and tall of his
age (sufficiently so that he could be concealed in a drawer almost
immediately under the chess-board") played the game of chess and
effected all the evolutions of the Automaton. This idea, although
even more silly than that of the Parisian author, met with a better
reception, and was in some measure believed to be the true solution of
the wonder, until the inventor put an end to the discussion by suffering
a close examination of the top of the box.

These bizarre attempts at explanation were followed by others equally
bizarre. Of late years however, an anonymous writer, by a course of
reasoning exceedingly unphilosophical, has contrived to blunder upon a
plausible solution--although we cannot consider it altogether the true
one. His Essay was first published in a Baltimore weekly paper, was
illustrated by cuts, and was entitled "An attempt to analyze the
Automaton Chess-Player of M. Maelzel." This Essay we suppose to have
been the original of the _pamphlet to _which Sir David Brewster alludes
in his letters on Natural Magic, and which he has no hesitation in
declaring a thorough and satisfactory explanation. The _results _of the
analysis are undoubtedly, in the main, just; but we can only account
for Brewster's pronouncing the Essay a thorough and satisfactory
explanation, by supposing him to have bestowed upon it a very cursory
and inattentive perusal. In the compendium of the Essay, made use of in
the Letters on Natural Magic, it is quite impossible to arrive at any
distinct conclusion in regard to the adequacy or inadequacy of the
analysis, on account of the gross misarrangement and deficiency of the
lett