I inclined to the doctrine of Poe, that no cipher can be devised which cannot be detected by an experienced hand; my friends indicated simple methods of defeating the processes on which decipherers rely.

"I grant," said I, "that these hieroglyphics might well puzzle a more practised decipherer than myself.

He was the first of a second generation who, following Rawlinson and Oppert, decipherers as well as explorers, were able to read as they found.

These decipherers of the inscriptions will tell you how the Shepherd Kings overthrew the native dynasty, coming with their armies from Asia long before Rameses, and changed religion and customs; under whom Jacob and his sons found hospitable welcome, until their hated race was expelled by a stronger native dynasty that knew not Joseph.

When the writers were first told that the letters had been deciphered, they laughed at the information as of a thing impracticable; but were soon undeceived by the decipherer, who sent to them by the son of the bishop of Ely copies of their letters in cipher, with a correct interlineary explanation of each.

Even this was displayed only on a single panel, whispering, rather than proclaiming, our relations to the state; whilst the beast from Birmingham had as much writing and painting on its sprawling flanks as would have puzzled a decipherer from the tombs of Luxor.

The curious point, of whose they are, may test the science of decipherers of palimpsest manuscripts; the more weighty one, of what they are worth, remains, as it was from the first, a matter on which every student of Shakspeare may arrive at some conclusion for himself.