Early inscriptions had for the most part been cut on stone. Then from about 300 B.C. came a time of writing with a pen. Rome took this over from Alexandria and Pergamon, and these _written_ characters became the foundation of a new style of monumental inscription. In pen-written characters the thick and thin strokes make themselves without there being any design in the matter. It seems equally natural in large clear writing to finish off the strokes with a thin touch of the pen to sharpen the forms. This procedure was taken over so exactly into inscriptions cut on stone that, for the most part, it seems these must first have been written on the stone with an implement like a wide brush and cut in afterwards by a mason. The chisel, like the pen, is thin and wide, and thus perfectly fitted to develop the habit of the pen. The cut letters were themselves usually finished by painting. Whoever wishes to design inscriptions must begin on the writing basis, and I should like to advise every student who may read these words to take up the practice of writing capital and small letters with single strokes of the pen, not “touching up” or “painting” the letters, and, above all, not “designing” them with high-waisted bars, swollen loops, little-headed S curves, and other horrors of ignorance and vulgarity, but learning once for all a central standard style. Half an hour a day for one week would teach much to any one who was ready to learn and did not want to do everything by genius. We have in England a great number of fine Roman inscriptions, and it would be an excellent piece of work to gather a selection into an example-book of illustrations based on corrected rubbings. Even the inscriptions of London carefully studied would be subject-matter for a delightful and valuable essay. 1. The finest London inscription is that on a tomb front in the British Museum (Fig. 120). This must be a first-century work nearly contemporary with the famous inscription of the Trajan column. The letters are large, deep, clearly cut, and of quite perfect form. It is something of a puzzle that such an artist as the author of this tomb should have been working in London only a few years after the Claudian Conquest. The letters of this inscription are still wonderfully sharp; the thick strokes of the big letters are about an inch wide, and the “serifs” are light and free as the stroke of a pen. Notice especially the beautiful curve of S, the square touch at the apex of N and A, and the sharp little triangular division point after the second letter in the last line (Fig. 121. See also Figs. 66 and 67). [Illustration: FIG. 120. ] [Illustration: FIG. 121. ]