FIXED DIA c D R INSIDE MOVEABLE к X L/M MOVEABLE DI N 3 OUTSIDE FIXED DIAL E F D Y c W H Α B 7 A B ა a ୯ No. 35.-The Revolving Dial Cipher. II. Set at A equals T. AO WT MCI KWZZ QCAS CJSF HC IG MCI GVOZZ No. 36.-The Revolving Dial Cipher. III. The cipher letter. No. 37- The "Ladder" Cipher. 452 III. FROM THE TIMES OF CHARLES II. TO THE SECOND GEORGE. SOM OME of the State ciphers used at the time when No. 31 was drawn up are very formidable documents, measuring about three feet by two. But this size is far surpassed by more modern Foreign Office ciphers. When I went to Downing Street to see about the mode of secret writing now used at the "F. O.," I learned, among other things, that the cipher-AA 159 AD 274 sheets now used are so look at them on the walls." 19 am 358 and 44 all 359 a& 444 are 361 ap 276 ar ad 191 at AZ 05 B2b bo 23 Ba 106 bi bu CO 13d arm ོད་ ce 111 ch 196 con 282 care 3 caufe 45 28 198 can 783 court 3 chief 452 29 count charg 453 are undoubtedly of great cipher now used by the E 33 "F. O." for communicat- which were used in 1840 as to the immense size of The facsimile shown G42 Ga 6 dr 703 did er 264 en 787 em 373 ent 123 fit 42 Ga 12 go 43 ge 126 gu 44g1 178 gr Ha 179 hu 16 he 171 his hi 17 her 48 few 376 falle 462 293 free 778 five 211 fail 244 first 379 from ho had have 472 Lence 473 K Ka 38 ki im 321 222 it 30s ill 302 ing 475 777 in seb 24 229. joy 32'3 kind King 30% 476 794 keep 471 knot as knew 44 No. 31.-Facsimile of part of a numerical cipher used, in the reign of Charles II., between Frince Rupert and the Earl of Arlington, Secretary of State. I. The Key. Copyright by John Holt Schooling. left-hand corner of the key-sheet used by Prince Rupert and Charles II.'s Secretary of State. The type, made more than two hundred years ago, is very good, and clearly cut; and, but for the antique spelling, the printing shown in No. 31 might almost pass for modern work. The method here illustrated is very simple: the letters of the alphabet run down the left side of the sheet, and have three numbers attached to each, any of which numbers were used at the option of Prince Rupert when he wrote in this cipher. Across the width of the sheet are printed a quantity of syllables and short words, commencing with a, b, c, etc., according to their respective positions on the sheet (see No. 31), and numbers are filled in to represent these syllables and short words. Therefore, given the key, the writing or the reading of a cipher-letter is simplicity itself (see No. 32); and in this respect the cipher now illustrated differs 478308378464392 No. 32.-Illustration of a letter written in the cipher used by Prince Rupert and Charles II.'s widely from the modern "F. O." cipher. Not only were those I examined so bulky that a small trolly had to be used to convey them to me, but there was on them such a mass of figures and calculations that it is wholly impossible to illustrate this cipher on a page which measures only 98 inches by 6 inches, even if I had the heart to increase the lunatic population of this country by presenting to readers a glorified version of that dreadful “15-Puzzle" which wrecked so many promising brains some years ago. Secretary of State. II. A Cipher-letter: Having seen, in No. 31, Prince Rupert's cipher, it will be interesting to look at an important letter written by him, part of which is shown in No. 33. This letter, the superscription of which is not preserved, reads: "S", Pray see if you can find Sr Tho. Fairefax will think me worthy to receave an obligation from him by setting his thought upon the means of prevaling for some place of liberty and safty for me. I can not but doubt that the conveing of my request without the hartinesse of a particular furtherance from him, may faile to have that effect I wish ; for I shall be very reddy to acknowlege an obligation that I am desiros to receare. Pray lett me heare as sone as you can from you. I rest yo very loving frend, RUPERT Oxf. 2 of May 1646." When Prince Rupert-the "County Palatine" of the Rhine, as Shakespeare hath it when he refers to a former holder of office in a king's palace-wrote this letter he had recently been deprived of his commission by Charles I. because he had too hastily surrendered Bristol to Sir Thomas Fairfax. On this occasion Charles attached the following postscript to a letter addressed to Sir Edward Nicholas, the guardian of Charles II.: "Tell my Sone that I shall lesse greve to heere that he is knoked on the heade, than that he should doe so meane an act as is the rendring of Bristoll Castell and Fort upon the termes it was." But, in writing thus, Charles was wrong. Rupert could not do a "meane act," although he could, and did, do rash acts. We have only to look at the gesture which was permanently recorded by Rupert's right hand in No. 33 to see that, while it is one of the boldest pieces of written gesture that we shall find in even an extensive collection of autograph-letters, it is also one of the most reckless. Rupert shows himself, by this remarkable piece of his gesture, left outside his grave in Henry VII.'s Chapel,—to have been a man cast for bold executive, but quite unfitted for the duty of directing affairs. So do a man's deeds live after him ! Rupert obtained the pass from Parliament, to get which he wrote the letter shown in No. 33; and then he went abroad, returning to England after the restoration of the Stuart line, and living in the esteem of honourable men, until he died at his house in Spring Gardens on November 29th, 1682. He was only twenty-seven years fr can find St Tho. Tavefax. Gray see rty apon the means place of Aberty and safty for me Out. a. of Chiy Life Dupert No. 33.-Facsimile of part of a letter written oy Prince Rupert, May 2nd, 1548. of age when he wrote this letter, and his mistake at Bristol should have been overlooked by his uncle Charles. The "Revolving Dial" cipher, illustrated in Nos. 34, 35 and 36, is a device at least two hundred years old. Two correspondents each possess one of these cardboard appliances, which is made by drawing a circle-called the "outside fixed dial "upon a square; a smaller circle-called the "inside moveable dial"-is then cut from a piece of card and attached at its centre to the larger circle, so that it may freely revolve inside this larger dial. The edges of both the dials are divided into twenty-six equal parts, and in these divisions the letters of the alphabet are written. It is obvious that any letter contained in the outside fixed dial may be represented by any letter in the inside revolving dial; and, in writing a cipher of this kind, the writer usually shifted the inside dial frequently while writing his secret message. In the short cipher given in No. 36 the first two letters (AO) tell the recipient of this message that he is to set his dial at A equals O (see No. 34): this enables him to read the first line of No. 36, and part of the second line, as, If you will come over to us you shall have a pension. The figure "5," which comes next in No. 36, tells the reader of the letter to move his inside dial five places from right to left he does so, and his dial is then as shown in No. 35, thereby enabling him to continue and you may still make a sham. The figure "2," which now follows, causes another shifting of the dial by two spaces, and the sentence can then be completed by the word opposition; the entire message being-If you will come over to us you shall have a pension, and you may still make a sham opposition. : This form of cipher is certainly ingenious for the period of its invention. The frequent shifting of the inside dial during the writing of a message tends to baffle the decipherer who is not in the secret, because the same letter of the real message is represented in the cipher message by different letters, which may be made to vary indefinitely, as the inside dial is shifted, at the option of the writer. For example, in the cipher given in No. 36, the O of the first you is represented by C, the O of the third you by H, and the O of opposition by J. For convenience I have avoided any complications in the use of the "Dial" cipher, but the reader's ingenuity will suggest other and more subtle ways of indicating to a correspondent the first "set" of the dial, and the subsequent changes in the "set" of it, than have been illustrated in No. 36 by the use of the letters 40 and of the figures 5 and 2. This is the cipher by which I constructed the concluding sentence of Part II. (see last month's number of this Magazine). By using the explanation now given, and by referring to Nos. 34 and 35, we can read off that sentence as: In reading documents of ancient date, the spelling and the abbreviations used by the writers of them are often confusing to the modern reader. The "Ladder" cipher, shown in No. 37, is worked on the same principle as that of the Revolving Dial cipher, illustrated in Nos. 34, 35 and 36, but differs materially in its construction. The appliance is in two separate parts: a long, narrow slip of card, upon which the letters A to Z are vertically written one below another, from the top to half-way down the slip, and upon which the alphabet is again written in a similar fashion from half-way down the slip to the bottom of it. The necessity for this repetition of the alphabet is seen when we examine the second part of the appliance, which consists of another slip of card the same width as the first slip and a little more than one-half the length of it. From this shorter slip are cut away twenty-six small pieces of card, and it is thus converted |