person of her brother, and the now final deathagonies, which bore him to the floor a corpse and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated: then the frenzied flight of the living man; the wild light that shot suddenly across his path; the light of the blood-red moon streaming in upon the fissure of the walls, which extended from the roof to the base; the rapid widening of the fissure; the power of the fierce breath of the whirlwind; the rushing asunder of the mighty walls; the long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters; and the deep and dark tarn closing sullenly and silently over the fragments of the House of Usher. A brief notice is all I can afford of the other tales. An able critic has remarked that Poe's fictions seem to resolve themselves for the most part into two classes: "One, where a series of facts woven mysteriously out of some unknown premises are brought apparently to a logical result; the other, where the author deals strictly with a single event ; where there is little or no preliminary matter, but the reader is at once hurried into a species of catastrophe, or conclusion of the most exciting character." Adopting this classification, which, for its justness and conciseness could hardly be surpassed, let us refer the several stories to their respective divisions. To the first belong The Golden-Bug, an ingenious account of the discovery of Captain Edinburgh Review, Vol. cvii.-ED. 1 Kyd's hidden treasures; The Murders of the Rue Morgue, which excited a sensation in Paris, and gave rise to a brisk discussion between two Parisian journals, La Quotidienne and La Commerce; The Purloined Letter, which exhibits much ingenuity and cunning quite worthy indeed of a Fouché; The Mystery of Marie Roget, in which the author, under pretence of relating the fate of a Parisian grisette, has followed in minute detail the essential facts of a murder committed in the vicinity of New York. The sagacity of Poe in his hypothetical conclusions was long afterwards confirmed in full by the testimony of two persons implicated in the murder. To the second division may be referred the story we have just analyzed; The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar; The Descent into the Maelström; The Pit and the Pendulum; and, indeed, almost all the other tales. But there are three stories which are referable to neither class,-William Wilson, The Domain of Arnheim, and Landor's Cottage. The first is curious and valuable, as William Wilson is manifestly intended as a personification of Poe's own conscience. William Wilson, a person resembling himself in every lineament, haunts him whenever he has done, or is about to do, a criminal action. Tortured at last into fury and desperation, he murders his good genius, and the story ends in these thrilling words: "Not a thread in all his raiment, not a line in all the marked and singular lineaments of his face, which was not, even in the most absolute identity, mine own. It was Wilson; but he spoke no longer in a whisper, and I could have fancied that I myself was speaking while he said-'You have conquered, and I yield. Yet, henceforward art thou also dead, -dead to the World, to Heaven, and to Hope. In me didst thou exist, and in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself." " The Domain of Arnheim and Landor's Cottage are highly idealized landscape-pictures, and contrast with one another; the first being an illustration of the sublimity of grandeur, the second of the sublimity of simplicity. With regard to the so-styled humorous pieces I have but one remark to make, and that is, that, if there be humour in them, the humour is bad, because it is invariably associated with something so distorted as to be revolting. On the whole, the tales are more morbid than the poems, and I believe few readers will close the volume without a feeling of relief. They are, in general, more like the recollections of an opiumeater's dreams than the deliberate compositions of a vigorous mind in a naturally healthy condition. Such were the life and character, and, by a natural consequence, such was the mind, of Edgar Allan Poe. A life of demoniac dissipation, interrupted by hysterical laughter and hysterical tears; the laughter of one who is not happy, the tears of one whose repentance is not deep; the remorse of the drunkard awaking in the cold midnight from his awful stupor, and realizing his position with a And chasms and caves and Titan woods, Into seas without a shore." Now the dreams are beautiful, ethereal; but the loveliest images soon relapse into distortion, "And round about his home the glory That blushed and bloomed, Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed." That the morbidness of this man's mind was the result of his frightful life, is but too evident; for his earlier poems, except when he manifestly mimics Byron, exhibit much of the health and vigour of youth. Yet we can take but a one-sided view of a man's character, after all. The secret sorrow and the incommunicable anguish must be for ever hidden from us. Therefore we dare not judge too harshly. No man can sound the depths of the soul of his dearest friend, much less of one who is almost a stranger; and there is, and ever can be, but One true Critic in the universe. LA GERUSALEMME LIBERATA. THE HE Crusades were the sudden waking of the sleeper, full of the vigour and the freshness of the morning, with the light of dreams still lingering about his eyes, and a heart ready to grapple with the monstrous and the unknown . . . Although fanaticism is to be pitied and to be deplored, there [was] something gigantic in [the] enthusiasm, however blind, and however terrible in its consequences. Peter the Hermit was as much a visionary and an enthusiast as Savonarola or Edward Irving. But there is something touching as well as grand in the picture of a poor barefooted monk, going from land to land with the story of his Master's desecrated tomb, and kindling with his rude eloquence princes and peasants, the warrior and the craftsman, and even women and tender boys. The practical gains of the estimated at almost nothing. Crusaders may be |