But soldiers are not much in my way, and my military signatures are few. My collection is rich in politicians. Here comes, first in date though in nothing else, that Duke of Bedford who negotiated the Treaty of Fontainebleau and got trounced by Junius for his pains. It is written in 1767, just as the writer is "setting out from Woburn Abbey to consult his Shropshire oculist" (why Shropshire?), and has the small, cramped character which is common to so many conditions of shortened sight. (I find exactly the same in a letter of Lord Chancellor Hatherley, 1881.) Thirty-nine years pass, and William Pitt writes his last letter from "Putney Hill, the 1st of January, 1806, 2 P.M.," the writing as clear, as steady, and as beautifully formed as if the "Sun of Austerlitz" had never dawned. And now the Statesmen pass me in rapid succession and in fine disregard of chronological order. Lord Russell writes a graceful, fluent, rather feminine hand; Charles Villiers's writing is of the same family; and the great Lord Derby's a perfect specimen of the "Italian hand," delicate as if drawn with a crow-quill, and slanted into alluring tails and loops. Lord Brougham's was a vile scrawl, with half the letters tumbling backwards. John Bright's is small, neat, and absolutely clear; nor is it fanciful to surmise that Mr. Chamberlain copied Mr. Bright, and were they not both short-sighted men? And Lord Goschen's writing, from the same cause, is smaller still. The Duke of Argyll wrote a startling and imperious hand, worthy of a Highland chief whose ancestors not so long ago exercised the power of life and death; Lord Iddesleigh a neat and orderly hand, becoming a Private Secretary or Permanent Official. Lord Granville's and Mr. Forster's writings had this in common, that they looked most surprisingly candid and straightforward. The present Duke of Devonshire's writing suggests nothing but vanity, self-consciousness, and ostentation. We all can judge, even without being caligraphists, how far these suggestions conform to the facts. By far the most pleasing autograph of all the Statesmen is Lord Beaconsfield's, artistically formed and highly finished--in his own phrase, "that form of scripture which attracts." With the utmost possible loyalty to a lost leader, I would submit that Mr. Gladstone wrote an uncommonly bad hand--not bad in point of appearance, for it was neat and comely even when it was hurried; but bad morally--a kind of caligraphic imposture, for it looks quite remarkably legible, and it is only when you come to close quarters with it and try to decipher an important passage that you find that all the letters are practically the same, and that the interpretation of a word must depend on the context.