National Republican. (Washington City (D.C.)) 1872-1888, 1874-04-14

BY the assistance o: tho devil, or his dull repre-
sentative Of the present day, spiritual N edium.
Thirdly, non-signihcants should be used often,
and our alphabets always arbitrarily arranged.
Lastly, the difficulty of secret writing may also
be much increased BY writing In the Oriental
fashion, from right TO len; or, better STILL from
right to len and LET TO right alternately plough
ing letters after the fashion Of the Japanese or
Greeks. It is possible that Daniel-we speak
with rsverencs-hrss introduced the ars Of deci-
phering when he explained to the King Of Baby.
Ion that sad and mystic writing on the wall. That
Scripture may have been explained BY the oaoal.
istic method to which we have before alluded, and
which, in all probability, Jeremiah learned from
Daniel as his contemporary and friend. Indeed,
the art Of deciphering must have been
very feeble formerly, or the Lacede-
monian seytale could scarcely have remained
diflculty; and yet It may have been as
good for their age as Il is bad for ours. Gorgo's
advice was more piece OF feminine cunning than
artistic skill. A good decpherer must be . man
Of many parts Such Mercury is not made eut
Of every wood He must be OF lively imagination,
good judgment and retentive memory; he should
be we'll acquainted with many languages; for
though the strange assertion is true that man
skilled in dsciphering, and not knowing German
or Spanish, may yet explain mystic writing IN
those tongues; though this is true It is neverthe.
less Of great assistance to the explorer 70 be well
yersed in them. Tho necessity of patient perse-
verance Is Is needless to insist on. Bruce and the
spider should be continually before his minds
eye. Practice alone here, Is elsewhere, leads to
perfection. The deciphsrer should first aid him
self as much as possible by collateral evidence
as to the remitter and receiver, and the date
and su6iect Of the missive. He should then
consider 1t under the light Of certain lin
gustic criteria, IN which he should DO well
skilled, in order to determine the language
in which II Is written. He should observe,
impossible, monosyllables, bIgrams, trigrams,
&C., always beginning his investigation with the
shortest words, He should set down on table
the order Of occurrences Of each sign or letter.
Those most frequent are probably vowels; where
there are only two letters, one is necessarily q
vowel He should know the comparative fire.
quency of recurrence of all letters In all languages
In which the missive may be written. Fur In
stance, that "e" Is the most acknowledgement
letter in French, English and German; 30" In
italian and Spanish. That in the latter 30" is
frequently followed by as" and 'u" by &C." That
the English tongue abounds In monosyllables.
That the only monogram in German is 20" and
monosyllsbles very rare. The presence Of such
combinations as ''sch, :" 'Tch" should, of course"
be looked for here. In our own language ~" and
"a" are the sole monograms. Many other lights
OF this Kind the attentive deoipherer will so2n
klndle for himself We have already said that
for dccipherIng patience and sagacity are both
desirable. but patience is yet more desirable than
sssacity.