to return to _Mora_. As I was walking out beyond the Porta San
Giovanni the other day, I heard the most ingenious and consolatory
periphrasis for a defeat that it was ever my good-fortune to hear; and,
as it shows the peculiar humor of the Romans, it may here have a place.
Two of a party of _contadini_ had been playing at _Mora_, the stakes
being, as usual, a bottle of wine, and each, in turn, had lost and won.
A lively and jocose discussion now arose between the friends on the one
side and the players on the other,--the former claiming that each of the
latter was to pay his bottle of wine for the game he lost, (to be drunk,
of course, by all,) and the latter insisting, that, as one loss offset
the other, nothing was to be paid by either. As I passed, one of the
players was speaking. "_Il primo partito_," he said, "_ho guadagnato io;
e poi, nel secondo_,"--here a pause,--"_ho perso la vittoria_": "The
first game, I won; the second, I----_lost the victory_." And with this
happy periphrasis, our friend admitted his defeat. I could not but think
how much better it would have been for the French, if this ingenious
mode of adjusting with the English the Battle of Waterloo had ever
occurred to them. To admit that they were defeated was of course
impossible; but to acknowledge that they "lost the victory" would by no
means have been humiliating. This would have soothed their irritable
national vanity, prevented many heart-burnings, saved long and idle
arguments and terrible "kicking against the pricks," and rendered a
friendly alliance possible.

No game has a better pedigree than _Mora_. It was played by the
Egyptians more than two thousand years before the Christian era. In the
paintings at Thebes and in the temples of Beni-Hassan, seated figures
may be seen playing it,--some keeping their reckoning with the left hand
uplifted,--some striking off the game with both hands, to show that it
was won,--and, in a word, using the same gestures as the modern Romans.
From Egypt it was introduced into Greece. The Romans brought it from
Greece at an early period, and it has existed among them ever since,
having suffered apparently no alteration. Its ancient Roman name was
_Micatio_, and to play it was called _micare digitis_,--"to flash the
fingers,"--the modern name _Mora_ being merely a corruption of the verb
_micare_. Varro describes it precisely as it is now played; and Cicero,
in the first book of his treatise "De Divinatione," th