"A letter for you," replies the gaoler. "Truly godly master Bampfylde did make some difficulty about passing it but as he deemed that there was no harm therein, after he and precious Master Tatham, the lecturer at Peter's, had read it over to their best judgment, he even bade me carry it to you.'

"I am obliged to you," says Sir John. "Hold, here's a half Carolus for you. Some day I may chance to pay my debt to Master Bampfylde in a different manner."

The gaoler departs. The royalist, going close to the grated window, reads the letter.

"Worthie Sir John,

"Hope, that is y° beste comfort of the afflictyd, cannot much, I fear me, help you now. That I wolde saye to you, is this only: if ever I may be able to requite that I do owe you, stand not upon asking me. 'Tis not much I

can do: but what I can, bee you very sure I wille. I knowe that, if dethe comes, if ordinary men fear it, it frights you not, accounting it for a high honour, to have such a rewarde of youre loyalty. Pray yet that you may be spared this so bitter, cup. I fear not that you wille grudge any sufferings: only if by submission you can turn them away, 'tis the part of a wise man. Tell me, an if you can, to do for you any thinge that you would have done. The general goes backe on Wednesday. Restinge your servant to command, R. T."

This letter, which to my reader will seem nearly pure nonsense, contains all that Sir John wants. He and other cavaliers had a cypher of this kind: every third letter after a stop was all that was to tell. Read so, the letter runs thus:

P, a, n, e, l, a, t, e, a, s, t, e, n, d, o, f, c, h, a, p, e, 1, s, 1, i, d, e, s.

I must leave others to tell how, fortified with that information, Sir John Trevanion asked leave to be locked in the chapel: how his gaoler, believing him a superstitious worshipper of Baal, permitted that building to be opened by a golden key: and how when, an hour after, he went to look for the royalist, he found emptiness and silence.

A still better arrangement is the following. Suppose a letter begins, "The circumstances under which I write are such as to preclude any long expression of feeling." The first word has three letters,-that signifies that it is the third letter which is to tell. The next has thirteen: the thirteenth word then would be the first employed. The next has five: the eighteenth word would be the second: the third has five; the twenty-third word would be the third:

and so on.

Another variety of this kind is the pitching on some particular word of every sentence to bear the meaning: one of the most ingenious things done in this way took place, I think, in the Portuguese war of liberty. When the Castilian yoke had been cast off, and the duke of Bragança proclaimed under the title of Don João IV., Mathias d'Albuquerque was appointed military governor of Alemtejo, where the brunt of the war would be: in the May of 1644 the Portuguese forces, under this general, and the Spanish army, commanded by Baron Molinghem, lay within two miles of each other, near Badajoz.

I will not profess to give the exact facts, for the best reason in the world, that I do not know them, and I doubt if they are known. But the general features of the case were these.

D'Albuquerque was desirous of communicating with Don Manuel de Costa Real, who, with a small body of troops, was then in Elvas: and of arranging a night attack on the Spanish forces. He trusted his errand to several adroit messengers; but the Spanish lines were too well formed to permit their passage. At last he hit on the following plan. He had previously concerted a system of cypher with Costa Real, in which each twelfth word was to tell the true meaning. He now prepared a letter, on a plan which the reader will see presently, and gave it to a soldier who, besides fidelity, possessed ingenuity.

"This letter is for De Costa Real," he said: "if you are taken by the Spanish, you may confess that you are in the secret of the cypher; to save your life, explain to them that it consists in the first word after every stop. You will be careful however not to say that I gave you any such permission."

Joaquim set off on his dangerous expedition, and in the

course of the same evening was taken by the Castilian patrols.

"Despatches, my lord," said an aide-de-camp, entering the Baron de Molinghem's tent, at nightfall, "sent from the rebels' head quarters to Elvas. We took them from a messenger about an hour ago."

"Is he alive or dead?" asked the general.

"Alive, my lord, under good guard."

"So, so!" cried De Molinghem, "this may be important." And taking care not to break the seal, he read a long verbose epistle, without any great sense, and quite unworthy of being despatched by private messenger between two generals. It needed less than the Spaniard's sense to discern that it was in cypher. Accordingly he desired Joaquim to be brought in, and questioned him very closely as to his errand. The wily Portuguese suffered himself to be drawn into a confession, that the letter was in cypher, and that he was acquainted with the key.

"So you know it, sirrah," said De Molinghem. will then have the goodness to explain it at once."

"You

"My lord," said Joaquim, "I am a man of honour, and

will not betray my general."

"Ho, there!" cried the other, "order out a file of soldiers, De Mello. Now, Sir, explain this at once, or in five minutes you shall be shot."

"But, my lord—”

"There is my watch," said De Molinghem.

"Not a

second over the five minutes; and I care very little about the matter, for we shall easily decypher the thing."

Joaquim permitted a minute or two to elapse, and then whined out, "Will you promise me my life if I tell?” "I will," said De Molinghem.

"Well, then," said the Portuguese, "I will:" and he explained the cypher.

The general read it, and made out that a night attack was meditated on his quarters at two in the morning of the next Wednesday. The letter, in reality, was written in double cypher-a true one for De Costa Real, a false one now explained by Joaquim. The latter personage had been removed under guard, and was now brought back.

Well, sirrah," said the general, "you may carry in what you brought. Take my advice and say nothing of the

discovery you have made; or your head is sure to answer it as a traitor."

On all this D'Albuquerque had counted. He reckoned on the Spaniard's preparing himself for the night attack of Wednesday evening, and transmitting the letter, in hopes of taking advantage of the enemy's confusion when they discovered that their design was known; and Joaquim had his orders accordingly.

De Costa Real received the packet safely, read it according to his cypher, and came at the true meaning: a night attack, with its full arrangement for the Tuesday, not the Wednesday evening. De Molinghem, meanwhile, gave information to his officers, and lay down asleep on the Monday night, with the pleasant impression that on the Tuesday night he should take the Portuguese in their own trap. Unfortunately for himself he was caught in theirs. And the results of that Tuesday morning brought on the battle of Montijo, which settled the independence of Portugal.

I will mention but one more kind of cypher, and it is the best of all, because though it may be guessed, it can never be discovered for certain.

The correspondents write on paper of a particular shape. Each has a card of exactly the same size as the sheet. The same holes are cut in both cards. When the writer wishes to communicate anything, he lays his card on the sheet, and writes what he has to say through the holes. He then removes it, and fills up the interstices as well as he can. His correspondent puts his card on the letter, and gets the information, which but for that no one could procure. Thus, the message to be conveyed is, "All is ready for the rising. Come at once." The Chartist or Socialist, who wishes to communicate this pleasant intelligence, without coming under the notice of the police, might write thus through his card:

And then, removing the card, he would thus address his correspondent:—

Dear Sir,

I believe I have received all the letters which you promised. It is odd that I cannot get you to give me an account of your own health. Charles has already left Bath. After residing there for the year, I do not wonder at it. He will never be well, till he takes to early rising. When will you come and pay your promised visit to us at Burdham ?-Do settle at once.

I remain, &c.

Thank GOD, we may now amuse ourselves with such contrivances and long may it be before they are used by bad, or forced upon good, men.

ROMAN LONDON.

In the title of this paper we have a combination of words fully as magical in its effect as the ancora pancorene of the alchemists, or the mystic words inscribed on the seal of Solomon. They carry us back in fancy 1800 years along the stream of time, to the days when London was to Rome what Sydney is to London, and when Martial thought he could not praise a British lady more agreeably than by expressing his wonder that she had Britons for her countrymen.

Although London was in the power of the Romans for more than 400 years, that is, for nearly one fourth of the time that has elapsed since its existence is first noticed in history, only one relic of that mighty people is to be found above ground in the modern city.

If we would raise up before our mind's eye the London of the Romans, we must endeavour to scrape off the thick stratum of dirt that intervenes between us and it, and attempt to arrive at a correct understanding of the