Of course, school-teaching is responsible to a certain extent for handwriting. Our University men of to-day all, with few exceptions, use a neat scholarly form of writing, free from flourishes, and with simple capital letters and the small broken-backed Greek letter ε. Compared with the scholar’s, the soldier’s writing is bolder and rounder, while the clerk’s is still more distinct in type in its open lettering, interspersed with curls and twists. So with most professions it will be found that each has special characteristics; but these are liable to change according to circumstances; thus, the clerk will form his letters less distinctly after the need of great legibility no longer compels him to carefulness. Self-education will often alter a vulgar, ill-formed writing to a better, more studied style; and writing is the clearest proof of both bodily and mental condition, for in cases of paralysis or mental aberration the doctor takes it as a certain guide. The writing of feeble-minded persons is like that of a scarcely-educated child. Looking back to the days when writing was a profession of itself, it can easily be understood how it is that we find less variety among old writings. For in those days, before printing was discovered, or at least but imperfectly executed and understood, all books had to be produced by hand, and were the work either of paid scribes, whose duty it was to reproduce copies of well-known authors; or else copied out by clerks or private secretaries at the dictation of the authors themselves, who could seldom spare the time to commit their ideas to paper, or, even if they did so, it was customary to have additional copies made by professed scribes. Unacquainted with the subjects of the books, and copying merely from verbal dictation, it is no wonder that mistakes and misunderstandings often occurred, especially in the spelling of place and personal names; for one man reading aloud to several scribes, each would write down the names and words as they sounded to his individual sense of hearing, for the constant interruption necessary to ensure complete accuracy would cause the process to be tedious and very lengthy. Private correspondence, even, was carried on as a profession; writing shops existed up to a comparatively late period; at present, in out-of-the-way streets in London, one reads the notice ‘Letters written here,’ though this generally means that letters may be sent to that address. Authors who indited or dictated their own books had them afterwards transcribed neatly for preservation, and probably destroyed the original notes, for of these comparatively few, if any, exist.