{*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. 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 letters of reference
      employed. The same fault is to be found in the “Attempt &c.,” as
      we originally saw it. The solution consists in a series of minute
      explanations, (accompanied by wood-cuts, the whole occupying many
      pages) in which the object is to show the _possibility _of _so
      shifting the partitions _of the box, as to allow a human being,
      concealed in the interior, to move portions of his body from one
      part of the box to another, during the exhibition of the
      mechanism—thus eluding the scrutiny of the spectators. There can
      be no doubt, as we have before observed, and as we will presently
      endeavor to show, that the principle, or rather the result, of
      this solution is the true one. Some person is concealed in the
      box during the whole time of exhibiting the interior. We object,
      however, to the whole verbose description of the _manner _in
      which the partitions are shifted, to accommodate the movements of
      the person concealed. We object to it as a mere theory assumed in
      the first place, and to which circumstances are afterwards made
      to adapt themselves. It was not, and could not have been, arrived
      at by any inductive reasoning. In whatever way the shifting is
      managed, it is of course concealed at every step from
      observation. To show that certain movements might possibly be
      effected in a certain way, is very far from showing that they are
      actually so effected. There may be an infinity of other methods
      by which the same results may be obtained.