and perished, as in fact he did, in the glorious company of the great explorer.

one of the profession (and there are but two in London, who almost divide the To enumerate all the cases in which work) that within the last four years he father or son, and sometimes both, have has been entrusted with more than six played an important part would be to hundred cases from different parts of the enumerate most of the causes célèbres of country, in connection with certainly not the last forty years. Among the most two hundred of which has he had to ap famous may be mentioned that of Roupel, pear publicly. The rest are compromised the member for Lambeth, the son of the or hushed up, or in many instances never notorious smelter and founder of Roupel even go so far as that, for often the conPark, at Brixton, whose name he forged sulting parties only want their own suspiindiscriminately for ten years to deeds of cions confirmed for their own satisfaction, gift, conveyances, and wills, and who was without any intention of taking further duly sentenced to penal servitude for life action. They are for the most part matriafter squandering more than three hun-monial disputes; scandalous communicadred thousand pounds; the Tichborne tions from disappointed suitors, secretly case in its earliest form, when in 1867 the Hon. Mr. Stourton, one of the infant heir's trustees, brought letters of the claimant and the real Sir Roger for comparison, and when the expert gave his decided opinion that they could not both have come from the same hand; the will of Jonathan Armstrong of Carlisle, where the writing was so identical that the forgery was only discovered by the fact of a stamp having been used of a later date than the will itself bore, recalling that ingenious scene in Miss Edgeworth's "Patronage," when the date of a sixpence that had been placed under the seal is equally useful in proclaiming fraud; the remarkable trial known as Ring's Codicil, where a clergyman was suspected of forgery, the result being a compromise; and, not to weary with a distasteful record of crime, the case of Miss Edmunds of Brighton. This last is incidentally strange as affording one of the many instances of the astutest criminals who overreach themselves by a lapse into carelessness. Miss Edmunds had bought strychnine of the chemist under the name of Wood, in which name she signed the register of the sale of poisons. At the time of the inquest on the child who died of eating the poisoned chocolate, she forged a letter from the coroner requesting the loan of the chemist's book for inspection at the inquiry. The chemist gave up the book to the boy who brought the letter, who carried it to Miss Edmunds, who tore out, as she believed, the entry. It appeared, however, on the trial that the abstracted entry referred to another Miss Wood, and that the true criminal's remained. The expert proved to the satisfaction of the court that the letter and the signature were in Miss Edmunds's handwriting.

But these cases that come before the public do not represent one-third of the expert's practice. We are informed by

thrust under the front door; abusive and threatening letters; erasures in and suspected signatures to wills; and — strange that a day of universal love and harmony should be so desecrated! - no Valentine's Day passes that does not bring with it half-a-dozen letters, poesies, or pictures, as to the authors of which the recipients show an angry and a lively curiosity. Occasionally the expert's opinion will be asked on a difficulty which arose before the profession attained its present eminence on the validity of a signature to a will, for instance, signed forty years ago, and, though at the time suspected, never legally impugned. "Only the other day," said the authority in question to us, “I was taken to see one of these wills. The moment I set eyes on it I knew it as a rank forgery. Nothing could be done, nor ever can be done in cases where the parties are all dead and the property has long changed hands. The consequence is that, in my own experience, I have met again and again with instances of estates and incomes held under a title founded on the most indisputable forgeries, but which no one at the time had the courage or the money to take into court."

And now that we have for the moment turned to the subject of the expert's examination of papers written many years before, it will not be uninteresting to refer to the late Mr. Chabot's opinion on the vexed question of the authorship of Junius, founded on a minute comparison of many handwritings and embodied in an exhaustive publication, edited and pret aced by the Hon. Edward Twistleton the whole, to our mind at any rate, conclusive of the difficulty. The subject had been previously somewhat similarly dealt with in "Junius Identified," written by Mr. Taylor in 1816; where, though not to the same extent on the ground of identity of handwriting, subsequently more fully

treated in a supplement to the same book published in the following year, the author had come to a similar decision. Under the various well-considered and well-sustained heads of verbal agreement in phrases, uncommon phrases, metaphorical phrases, particular doctrines, opinions, cautions, maxims, and rules of conduct, peculiar sentiments, words similarly italicized, similar quotations, manner and personification, Mr. Taylor makes out a very strong case against Sir Philip Francis, and in fact, so far as it be true that le style c'est Phomme, there can be little doubt, after reading the book and verifying the comparisons, that Sir Philip Francis and Junius are the same.

in support of his opinion on its beauty, Mr. Blake quoted the well-known lines from "The Giaour," beginning "He who hath bent him o'er the dead." Sir Philip pish'd and pooh'd, and taking up a pen extracted a string of words from the quotation as more or less meaningless and inapposite, ending with a word of his own — senseless — to all which he subscribed his initials between the two dashes. Then said Mr. Blake, being well acquainted with the two same dashes of Junius from Mr. Taylor's book, “Pray will you allow me to ask you, Sir Philip, do you always sign your initials in that manner?" To which Sir Philip, scowling and growling, answered, “I know what you mean, sir!” and throwing down the pen strode away. This happened forty-eight years after May 3, 1769- the date of the Junius letter in which the signature between the two dashes first occurs.

But Mr. Chabot set himself seriously to work to examine and compare the handwriting of all who have ever been sus pected of the authorship, from the calmer point of view of the expert who has neither political nor family interest in the matter; It seems strange that a love-letter should after giving a month to the study of forty supply yet another link in fixing the autwo letters of Sir Philip's and making him thorship of the most scathing invective self perfectly familiar with their principal and the bitterest sarcasm in the language. features and subtle peculiarities, he turned But there is published at the end of Mr. first to the specimens of Junius preserved Chabot's book, as the work of another by his printer, Woodfall, and then to the well-known expert, Mr. Netherclift, the manuscripts in the British Museum, and facsimile of an epistle to a lady, in a disin Junius found so many of the character- guised upright hand of Sir Philip's that is istics of Sir Philip reproduced as to pre-identical with the disguised upright hand clude any supposition of accidental coin- of Junius. It was written at Bath in the cidence. The signature of Junius-a winter of 1770 to a Miss Giles, the daughC between two dashes - completes the ter of one of the officials of the Bank of chain with one as remarkable as any. England, afterwards governor when in the You have only to look at one of these C's time of Mr. Pitt the bank stopped paywith its accompanying marks and comment. In those days it was customary at pare it with the dash above and below the the Assembly Rooms for a lady to retain initials P. F., to see that the resemblance her partner during the whole of the evencould not be more perfect. Whosesoever ing, and for several evenings Mr. Francis might have been the brain that prompted and Miss Giles danced together. The the dictation, if it be true that it is merely result of it was a very tolerable copy of the handwriting and not the authorship verses, delivered to Miss Giles with an that is identical — and yet, from what we anonymous letter, wherein the writer deknow of Francis, his was scarcely theclared that, having found the verses, which temper to submit to any man's dictation there can be no earthly doubt that the hand that wrote the letters to his brotherin-law, Mackrabie, in Philadelphia, is the same that wrote the manuscript, so often and so secretly sent to Woodfall. And à propos of these accompanying dashes there is a curious story told, not in itself perhaps of any first-rate value as evidence, but certainly supplying what lawyers would call an adminiculum of proof. The incident happened in 1817, after the publication of Junius Identified," when a certain Mr. Blake staying in a country house with Sir Philip, the conversation turned on the poetry of Lord Byron, and,

were unaddressed, he could not conceive for whom they were meant unless for her. At the time the young lady suspected the author but said nothing, and it was not till years afterwards when, though the wife of Mr. King of Taplow, she still kept the papers, that a scrap of Junius's writing was being handed round the company in which she happened to be. "Why!" exclaimed Mrs. King, when the paper came to her, "I know that writing. The person who wrote that wrote me some verses and a letter." And on comparison, though the verses were plainly by another hand, the letter was as plainly in the hand of Junius. The verses, Sir Philip's com.

ness of certain signatures on a family pedigree made in 1751. And the pedigree was ultimately proved by the family solic

position, were afterwards proved to have been dictated to his friend Tilghman, who spent the winter of 1770 with him at Bath: in one of whose letters from America partitor, who had for thirty years been acquirof a verse is jokingly quoted, in proof of Francis's capacity for poetry of the highest order.

That Sir Philip publicly and in the strongest terms denied the authorship is very well known, but by that denial one is only reminded of the reply said to have been made under similar circumstances by the author of "Ecce Homo," "Why, if I had written it, you know I should certainly say I hadn't."

18, by Sections 1 and 8, extends the provisions to criminal cases.

ing knowledge of the writing in question by constant familiarity with title-deeds, account-books, and other business papers in his possession. In 1853 the report of the Common Law Procedure Commission. ers recommended the abolition of these exclusions, and in civil cases the restrictions were abolished in the following year by the Common Law Procedure Act (17 & 18 Vict. c. 125), by Section 27 of which it is enacted that "comparison of a disputed The first expert had other difficulties to writing with any writing proved to the contend with than those merely of want of satisfaction of the judge to be genuine public recognition, and chief among them shall be permitted to be made by witwas the extreme narrowness of the rule nesses; and such writings and the evithat in the law courts limited the reception dence of witnesses respecting the same of his evidence. In the Ecclesiastical may be submitted to the court and the Courts, where a judge sat without a jury, jury as evidence of genuineness or other. the comparison of handwritings was al-wise of the writing in dispute." By Secways permitted, but until the Common tion 103 this applies to every court of civil Law Procedure Act of 1854 no such evi- jurisdiction; and the statute 28 Vict. c. dence (with two exceptions) was admissible at Nisi Prius; and for these reasons - first, because the writings offered for comparison might be spurious, and so cause inconvenience by raising the collateral issue of proving their genuineness; second, because the specimens might not be fairly selected, and only such as would best serve the purpose of the party producing them; third, because the jury might not be able to read. The two exceptions where the rule was relaxed were, first, in favor of documents already in evidence in the cause, admitted or proved to be in the handwriting of the supposed writer, which might be compared with the disputed handwriting; and second, in favor of ancient documents, the writer of which was dead, for lex non cogit impossibilia, and the author could not come and speak to them himself. But even to these exceptions there was the further limita tion, though it was not always rigidly observed, that the witness who gave his opinion must have gained his knowledge in the ordinary course of his business, and not from having studied the handwriting in dispute for the purpose of speaking to the identity of the writer. In the case of the Fitzwalter peerage (in abeyance since 1756 and resuscitated in 1843) the evidence of the inspector of franks at the The document in question was a will, General Post Office was rejected because the signature to which was undoubtedly his knowledge of the disputed handwriting genuine; the whole of which, indeed, to could not have been acquired in the ordi- all appearance was in regular form and nary course of his business, since he was duly witnessed. It dealt with some sev. called to give an opinion on the genuine-enty thousand pounds, the greater part

The expert now, therefore, as far as the courts of law are concerned, has a clear field before him; and, though he complains occasionally of a want of fairness from the public and the press, who laugh at his failures and pay no heed to his successes, his position is at all events fully recognized, and he is even retained and employed by government. His favorite practice lies among the county courts; for there, in the absence of the Nisi Prius jury, to whom it is difficult to point out individually the various points and niceties of resemblance, he is brought into the closest connection with the judge, and, seated by his side, can easily make plain that which from the witness-box appears confused. His value was never more strikingly exemplified than in a recent case of forgery, one of the most ingenious and daring that has ever occupied the attention of a court of law, the perpetrators of which have been convicted of the crimes of forgery and conspiracy at the Old Bailey; a case which, though it may be still fresh in the public mind, will nevertheless bear the retelling, especially from the point of view of an expert, many of whose observations were not fully reported.

left by the testator to the man in whose | Early in the inquiry the will had been house he was lodging, five thousand glazed and tamed, and now, left to itself, pounds only being bequeathed to his only the paper as it were began to speak and son alive, to whose knowledge and to declare itself otherwise than what it whom, by a later will (never found and seemed. They were not pencil marks, but presumably destroyed), there was a be- the hollows and shades where pencil quest of almost the entire property. On marks had been, and soon they took the the face of a document apparently so un- form of words and fragments of words, impeachable there was nothing for it but and by the aid of a powerful magnifying to submit, and the unfortunate son, under glass could even be read, sufficiently the form of a compromise, was glad to clearly too for the expert to be able to say fall back upon the generosity of the prin- that they were in the handwriting of one cipal legatee and accept something more of the attesting witnesses and principal than his five thousand pounds, with the un- legatee, the prime mover, as it afterwards derstanding that he kept quiet; but on the appeared, in the fraud. It has long been thieves beginning to quarrel about their known to those who have had experience shares in the booty among themselves, of palimpsests that time will often recall a one of the discontented began to talk, writing long believed to have been oblitwas encouraged to continue, and finally erated. Erase the writing carefully as gave enough information to warrant an you will, till all trace of pencil or pen be application in the Probate Court to set gone, yet with most kinds of paper all aside the compromise as based on a fraud. that will be erased will be the immediate The whole modus operandi was then made marks of the plumbago or the ink; there clear, and proved to have been almost will still remain the indentations on the exactly as the expert had suspected; to paper, which at the time filled up, like whom at the beginning of the proceedings cart-ruts, with the dust and surface of the the will had been entrusted for examina-material rubbed across them, will in time tion, and who had made the following ob- gradually clear themselves and reappear. servations upon it. In the first place, the Here, then, was clearly a palimpsest of one signatures were all genuine, and the doc- kind or another, an ink-writing over penument itself in the hand of one of the cil; apparently, from what could be deciattesting witnesses a fact fully admit-phered, a letter, for at the head of the ted. The testator's signature was at the document traces of my dear could be seen bottom, and the attesting clauses rather -a suspicious fact, to which the date curiously cramped at the side, from their under the signature also pointed in cor position giving rise to the idea in the ex-roboration. And that is precisely what pert's mind that they had been added subsequently with a view to accommodating the signature. The signature itself, too, had a date under it, a peculiarity of the testator's in writing a letter, but never found elsewhere. On further examina tion of the body of the will there appeared a certain variation of the spacing between the lines, as though the writer had begun in the belief that there was ample room; then he had narrowed the intervening spaces, had pressed more words into the line, and finally, finding there was still paper to be covered, had spread out again towards the end. In short, everything seemed to point to a will written over and round a signature, and not to a signature naturally written at the bottom of a will, to say nothing of the suspicious circumstance of the date. In the mean time there began to appear in different parts of the paper, steadily and surely, like growths that would not be denied, certain marks and formations, as though underneath all this fair show the suspected fraud were after all bent on making itself visible.

had occurred, for the testator, believing himself to be in extremis, desired the presence of his son, and at his request the principal legatee had written for him the letter, taking the precaution of writing it in pencil, while he was equally careful that the signature should be in ink. Then the pencil was rubbed out, as it seemed entirely, and over the precious signature the will was written, dividing the property among the attesting witnesses and lega tees, and practically disinheriting the son.

No work conveying instruction on the comparison of handwritings has ever appeared in this country, nor do we in this brief paper presume to make even the attempt to supply the deficiency. We can only string together as connectedly as possible the few notes and observations we have been enabled to make in reference to a profession which, in these days of steel pens and voluminous correspondence, is, we venture to think, of some importance. In the old days of the quill, when the mere fact of a man being able to write at all was sufficient for him to

right to keep; but we may say that he desires all papers to be submitted to him entirely without instructions or a mention of suspicions, that he looks above all for similarities and not for dissimilarities, and that there are certain letters, certain unusual letters, he proceeds at once to examine as more likely to be peculiar to and distinctive of the writer then any others. Nor, notwithstanding Maria's boast in "Twelfth Night" in reference to Olivia,

make distinction of our hands," does he believe it possible for any individual so to disguise his or her hand as to escape detection.

plead his benefit of clergy in answer to crime, and so escape the extreme penalty of the law, there were so few who possessed the accomplishment, that the expert, if he had existed, would have found but small employment. He has not even yet been established sufficiently long for contemporary references, except in the occasional form of leading articles, to be easily found, though to be sure he does in one instance, and one only as far as we know, play an important part in a work" on a forgotten matter we can hardly of fiction. That instance will be found in the romance of "Foul Play," by the late Mr. Charles Reade, where, under the thin disguise of Mr. Undercliffe, one of the best-known experts of the day aids mate- Experts have often been somewhat cayrially in detecting the villain, who till then alierly treated, both by judge and jury, has triumphed. Those curious in the but (as far as judges at any rate have been matter will find at the end of the third concerned) that was never a treatment volume a vivid portrait of this gentleman characteristic of the late Lord Chief Jusat work at his lithography and facsimiles, tice Cockburn, who perhaps had more whence he is summoned to examine the occasions of dealing with their evidence in forged note and the specimens of hand-important cases than any other authority writing which, together with the ingenious report (well worth studying by all who desire to understand the expert's method of examination and work), are fully set out, and were really the fabrications of the authority to whom we are indebted for much of our information. He was also, we may add, consulted by the novelist on the occasion of the correspondence he originated in one of the daily papers, dealing with our neglect of the left hand, and was the means of drawing his attention to the fact that after Nelson lost his arm he wrote better with the left hand than he had ever done with the right.

on the bench. No one can read his analy sis of the different handwritings in the Tichborne case, on the nineteenth day of the summing up, without feeling he fully recognized the value of the test; for there is nothing, he very truly says, in which men differ more than in handwriting, and nothing which a man is less likely completely even to lose or even greatly to alter, unless in sickness or old age; so far that is, of course, as its leading features are concerned. Put a man down to write whose identity is in question, and it will go some way to settle any doubts there may be. And in an earlier case-Cress well v. In conclusion, let us repeat it is clear Jackson, reported in the fourth volume of that without the previous apprenticeship Foster and Finlason - the view of Cockof lithography and facsimile-making there burn, chief justice, as he then was, on the can be no good expert, for by them the value of expert evidence is so fairly put eye is trained to the thousand peculiari. that it may well be adopted by all whose ties of penmanship, the different values of minds are not yet fully made up on the the hair-line and the body-stroke, and, subject. "The evidence of professional from a multitude of instances, to the innu- witnesses is to be viewed with some demerable formations of that ordinary abbre-gree of distrust, for it is generally with viation for and known by the strange and some bias. But within proper limits it is inexplicable name of the ampersand, to a very valuable assistance in inquiries of which it will be remembered the school. this kind. The advantage is that habits master, Bartle Massey, refers, in "Adam of handwriting as shown in minute Bede," as in shape very like one of his points which escape common observation, scholar's eccentric pictures of the letter but are quite observable when pointed out Z, "of which poor Jacob had written a -are detected and disclosed by science, pageful, all with their tops turned the skill, and experience. And it is so in the wrong way." The method of the expert comparison of handwriting by the assistwhen documents are first put into his hand ance of experts. Take this into consid. we have not thought proper fully to dis-eration with all the other circumstances in close, as one of the secrets of the profes- the case." sion the practitioners have a complete