“Now，inEnglish，theletterwhichmostfrequentlyoccursise。
Afterwards，successionrunsthus：_aoidhnrstuycfglmwbkpqxz_。_E_predominatessoremarkablythatanindividualsentenceofanylengthisrarelyseen，inwhichitisnottheprevailingcharacter。
“Here，then，weleave，intheverybeginning，thegroundworkforsomethingmorethanamereguess。Thegeneralusewhichmaybemadeofthetableisobvious-but，inthisparticularcipher，weshallonlyverypartiallyrequireitsaid。Asourpredominantcharacteris8，wewillcommencebyassumingitasthe_e_ofthenaturalalphabet。Toverifythesupposition，letusobserveifthe8beseenoftenincouples-for_e_isdoubledwithgreatfrequencyinEnglish-insuchwords，forexample，as’meet，’’。fleet，’’speed，’’seen，’
been，’’agree，’&c。Inthepresentinstanceweseeitdoublednolessthanfivetimes，althoughthecryptographisbrief。
“Letusassume8，then，as_e_。Now，ofall_words_inthelanguage，’the’ismostusual；letussee，therefore，whethertherearenotrepetitionsofanythreecharacters，inthesameorderofcollocation，thelastofthembeing8。Ifwediscoverrepetitionsofsuchletters，soarranged，theywillmostprobablyrepresenttheword’the。’Uponinspection，wefindnolessthansevensucharrangements，thecharactersbeing；48。Wemay，therefore，assumethat；represents_t_，4represents_h_，and8represents_e_-thelastbeingnowwellconfirmed。Thusagreatstephasbeentaken。