writing, as she has given a peculiar countenance, a voice, and a
manner. The flexibility of the muscles differs with every individual,
and the hand will follow the direction of the thoughts, and the emotions
and the habits of the writers.

"The phlegmatic will portray his words with signs of labour and
deliberation, while the playful haste of the volatile will scarcely
sketch them; the slovenly will blot and efface and scrawl, while the
neat and orderly-minded will view themselves in the paper before their
eyes. The merchant's clerk will not write like the lawyer or the poet.
Even nations are distinguished by their writing; the vivacity and
variableness of the Frenchman, and the delicacy and suppleness of the
Italian, are perceptibly distinct from the slowness and strength of pen
discoverable in the phlegmatic German, Dane, and Swede.

"When we are in grief we do not write as we should in joy. The elegant
and correct mind, which has acquired the fortunate habit of a fixity of
attention, will write with scarcely an erasure on the page, as Fenelon
and Gibbon; while we find in Pope's manuscripts the perpetual struggle
of correction, and the eager and rapid interlineations struck off in
heat. Lavater's notion of handwriting is by no means chimerical; nor was
General Paoli fanciful when he told Mr. Northcote he had decided on the
character and disposition of a man from his letters and the handwriting.

"Long before the days of Lavater, Shenstone in one of his letters said,
'I want to see Mrs. Jago's writing that I may judge of her temper.'

"One great truth must, however, be conceded to the opponents of the
physiognomy of handwriting. General rules only can be laid down. Yet the
vital principle must be true that the handwriting bears an analogy to
the character of the writer, as all voluntary actions are characteristic
of the individual."

* * * * *

Professor Foli, in his very useful work, "Handwriting as an Index to
Character" (London: C. A. Pearson, Ltd.), says:

"The changes which handwriting undergoes as maturity is reached prove
how directly it is influenced by the nervous condition of the writer.

"The writing proper to childhood is large, round and accompanied by a
laboured pen movement; whereas that which is normal as manhood or
womanhood is attained is smaller, and turned off by a more rapid and
fluent motion of the hand.

"Illness, again, affects the writing. As the hand is