1. A method of recognizing characters of a document including ruled lines in a system having means for reading the document and storing read data as an input image of pels, the method comprising: the step of separating said characters from said ruled lines; the step of extracting bounding boxes which contact respective characters in every side and character patterns defined by respective bounding boxes; and the steps, executed for each of said characters, of: from said character pattern, extracting contour information and ground information as fundamental features; extracting at least one kind of statistical features on the basis of said fundamental features; extracting at least one kind of structural features on the basis of said fundamental features and said character pattern; on the basis of said extracted statistical features, finding some number of candidates for said character and corresponding degrees of similarity to provide at least such one of said candidates as has largest degree of similarity and degree(s) of similarity associated with said at least one provided candidate; and providing a final candidate for said character pattern on the basis of said at least one provided candidate, said provided degree(s) of similarity, said structural features and said bounding box.