At all times, both in the East and the West, the letters and charters of Kings, and diplomatic documents of every {55}kind, needed the service of trained penmen. This department of graphic labour was not completely in the hands of churchmen; and it led to the creation of a caste of writers in every country who were not under the influence of the monkish schools. They could not afford to spend so much time as the book writers over their work, and thus a hand of cursive character was established in every chancellery in Europe, devoted only to the service of the State and never employed for any other purpose. It was nearly always ugly, sometimes fantastic, sometimes difficult to be read except by the officials engaged in such work. From the earliest days of diplomatic writing, in the sixth century in Italy, down to the seventeenth century in England, it preserved a strange and fanciful style, first long, thin and narrow letters looking like a congeries of wandering parallel lines indistinguishable without a glass, and finally letters of proper size, but so disguised in shape as to be indecipherable without a special training. At only one period, that is, in the late eleventh and in the twelfth century, was diplomatic writing fair and readable. That was in England and Northern France; but even here, the upright strokes of letters like l, and d, and b, were elongated to an enormous extent, and in their sweep offered to the scribe his few opportunities of ornamentation. As our business, however, is with books we leave the charters and the rescripts on one side, and proceed to the consideration of the main character of the calligrapher's work.