3 AUGUST 1867, Page 2

Lord Lyttelton's amusing amendment on the Reform Bill, refusing the

franchise to everybody who cannot write legibly, was, of course, withdrawn without a division. It was, in fact, condemned before it was proposed, the clerk being totally unable to make out his Lordship's illegible writing. Lord Granville told an amusing story of the same kind of a British Ambassador—Lord Cowley, we imagine—who writes so badly that his Lordship asked him to keep his originals and send the office copies. Of the letters received in this office, which are all from educated persons, at least 10 per cent. are written in that detestable Italian hand which was studied twenty years ago, and are intelligible only to compositors. The introduc- tion of note-paper spoiled half the handwritings in England. The lines are not long enough to admit of legible letters.