Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/110

 Rh I made several efforts while in Mexico, to procure a portrait of General Santa Anna for the purpose of presenting it to you; but I could find no engraving or lithograph, and the oil pictures were most wretchedly executed, without doing justice to his very characteristic face. In this age of autographs, however, when all persons collect, and some few even under, take to read a man's mind in his signature; I have thought that those of the President and of the late Emperor Iturbide, might not be uninteresting, and I therefore subjoin them. That of Santa Anna is a firm, clear, and distinct one; while Iturbide's, though strong and decided enough in its lines, has still a straggling manner, which indicates perhaps too much the weakness of many parts of that hero's character.