Cipher Writing

The art of secret writing, or writing in cipher, was, aceording to Polybius, invented by .Eneas, anthor of a treatise on tactics and other works. Heproduced 20 metbodsof writing in cipher, wbicb no person could uufold, bnt we doubt ranch whether they would preserve tbis quality at the present day. It is no lees strange than true that this art, so important in diploinacy, as long asconriers are liable to be intercepted, was held in abhorrence by the elector Frederic II, who considered it as a diabolical inventiou. Trithemius, abbot of Spanheim, had composed several works to revive this branch of knowledge, and Boville, an ignorant mathematician, being unable to comprehend the extraordinary ternas he made use of to explain nis method, published tbat the work was full of diabolical mysteries. Poissevin repeated the assertion, and Frederio, in a holy zeal, ordered the original work of Trithemius, which he bad in his library, to be bnrned as the invention of the