In the solution of the various ciphers which have been submitted to your examination, you have exhibited a power of analytical and synthetical reasoning I have never seen equalled; and the astonishing skill you have displayed,—particularly in deciphering the cryptograph of Dr. Charles J. Frailey, will, I think, crown you the king of “secret-readers.” But notwithstanding this, I think your opinion that the construction of a _real cryptograph_ is impossible, not sufficiently supported. Those examples which you have published have indeed not been of that character, as you have fully proved. They have, moreover, not been sufficiently accurate, for where the key was a phrase, (and consequently the same character was employed for several letters,) different words would be formed with the same ciphers. The sense could then only be ascertained from the context, and this would amount to a probability—generally of a high degree, I admit—but still not to a positive certainly. Nay, a case might readily be imagined, where the most important word of the communication, and one on which the sense of the whole depended, should have so equivocal a nature, that the person for whose benefit it was intended, would be unable, even with the aid of his key, to discover which of two very different interpretations should be the correct one. If necessary, this can easily be shown; thus, for example, suppose a lady should receive from her affianced, a letter written in ciphers, containing this sentence, “4 5663 967 268 26 3633,” and that _a_ and _n_ were represented by the figure 2,—_e_, _m_, and _r_ by 3,—_i_ by 4,—_l_ by 5,—_o_, _s_, and _v_ by 6,—_u_ by 7,—_w_ by 8,—and _y_ by 9; a moment’s inspection will show that the sentence might either be “I love you now as ever,” or “I love you now _no more_.” How “positively shocking,” “to say the least of it;” and yet several of the ciphers that you have published, have required a greater number of letters to be represented by one character, than any to be found in the example before us. It is evident, then, that this is not a very desirable system, as it would scarcely be more useful than a lock without its key, or with one that did not fit its wards.