Here I looked for a display of learning, but I met instead with
profound analysis.

"This Saknussemm," he went on, "was a very well-informed man; now
since he was not writing in his own mother tongue, he would naturally
select that which was currently adopted by the choice spirits of the
sixteenth century; I mean Latin. If I am mistaken, I can but try
Spanish, French, Italian, Greek, or Hebrew. But the savants of the
sixteenth century generally wrote in Latin. I am therefore entitled
to pronounce this, a priori, to be Latin. It is Latin."

I jumped up in my chair. My Latin memories rose in revolt against the
notion that these barbarous words could belong to the sweet language
of Virgil.

"Yes, it is Latin," my uncle went on; "but it is Latin confused and
in disorder; "PERTUBATA SEU INORDINATA," as Euclid has it."

"Very well," thought I, "if you can bring order out of that
confusion, my dear uncle, you are a clever man."

"Let us examine carefully," said he again, taking up the leaf upon
which I had written. "Here is a series of one hundred and thirty-two
letters in apparent disorder. There are words consisting of
consonants only, as NRRLLS; others, on the other hand, in which
vowels predominate, as for instance the fifth, UNEEIEF, or the last
but one, OSEIBO. Now this arrangement has evidently not been
premeditated; it has arisen mathematically in obedience to the
unknown law which has ruled in the succession of these letters. It