Kossuth, Lajos

Autograph letter signed, two pages (both sides), 5,25 x 8 inch, Collegno al Baraccone (Italy), 21.02.1877, in English, to Mr. Norris J Foster in Birmingham - Lajos Kossuth writes about collecting autographs, written and signed in black ink "L Kossuth", attractively mounted (removable) for fine display with a picture, shows Kossuth in a beautiful portrait (altogether 11,75 x 8,25 inch), with mild signs of wear to the edges - in fine to very fine condition.

In parts:
"Sir!
You wish me to write you a letter in order to possess a specimen of my handwriting
I confess, I never could understand what imaginable pleasure or interest men can find in collecting useless scripts of paper, merely for the sake of the handwriting of any man on earth. Writing has certainly an immense value as the exponent of ideas, but as a men mechanical tracing of the letters of the alphabet it can have none - Since the school master is stirring the whole length and breadth of the land, any village schoolboy may do that in higher perfection than any of those potent geniusses might have been able to do, who form the milestones on the road of the progress of humanity.
I am no genius, and I had never the ambition to aim at excelling in calligraphy.
So what can there be in my handwriting, that you not knowing me, and not known to me, should have set your mind on getting it ?
/
I must say I have immensely wondered by demands for autographs (...) from the other side of the atlantic, where collectioneering has grown to a national mania (...)"