is one of the fountains of human knowledge to which you should all resort with steady and persevering pursuit. The Bible contains the only authentic introduction to the history of the world; and in storing your minds with the facts of this history, you will immediately perceive the need of assistance from geography and chronology. These assistances you may find in many of the Bibles published with commentaries, and you can have no difficulty in procuring them. Acquaint yourselves with the chronology and geography of the Bible; that will lead you to a general knowledge of chronology and of geography, ancient and modern, and these will open to you an inexhaustible fountain of knowledge respecting the globe which you inhabit, and respecting the race of men (its inhabitants) to which you yourselves belong. You may pursue these inquiries just so far as your time and inclination will permit. Give one hour of mental application (for you must not read without thinking, or you will read to little purpose), give an hour of joint reading and thought to the chronology, and one to the geography, of the Bible, and, if it introduces you to too hard a study, stop there. Even for those two hours you will ever after read the Bible, and any other history, with more fruit, more intelligence, more satisfaction. But, if those two hours excite your curiosity, and tempt you to devote part of an hour every day for a year or years, to study thoroughly the chronology and geography of the Bible, it will not only lead you far deeper than you will otherwise ever penetrate into the knowledge of the book, but it will spread floods of light upon every step you shall ever afterwards take in acquiring the knowledge of profane history, and upon the local habitation of every tribe of man, and upon the name of every nation into which the children of Adam have been divided.

There are many other subsidiary studies to which you may devote more or less of time, for the express purpose of making your Bible reading more intelligible to yourselves. It is a book which neither the most ignorant and weakest, nor the most learned and intelligent mind can read without improvement.

EDGAR ALLEN POE, 1811-1849.

EDGAR ALLEN POE was born in Baltimore, in January, 1811. His father was David Poe, who in early life was a lawyer, and afterwards, having married an English actress, went upon the stage. His parents both died when he was quite young, leaving three children, Henry, Edgar, and Rosalie, with no means of support. Mr. John Allen, a wealthy merchant, of Richmond, adopted Edgar. This gentleman indulged his protégé injudiciously, and thus increased his naturally proud and petulant disposition. In 1816, Mr. and Mrs. Allen visited England, taking Edgar with them. He remained there five years at school. In 1822 he returned, and some time afterwards entered the University of Virginia. Here he began his downward course. Being abundantly supplied with money, he plunged into the deepest dissipation. He contracted heavy debts by gaming, indulged excessively in drinking, and all its attendant vices, and was at last expelled, though he had uniformly maintained a high rank in scholarship. After this, he led a wandering and dissipated life-first in Europe for a year; then, returning to this country, at West Point; then as a common soldier in the army; then in Charleston, S. C., as editor of the "Southern Literary Messenger," till, in 1838, he settled in Philadelphia, having married his cousin, Virginia Clemm, and became the chief editor of the "Gentleman's Magazine," and "Graham's Magazine." Here he endeavored to reform; but his thirst for drink was too strong, and he indulged it to such a degree that "for weeks he was regardless of everything but a morbid and insatiable appetite for the means of intoxication."

In 1844, Poe went to New York, and found employment in editing the "Broadway Journal," and in contributing to various other magazines. But he could not, or would not, break through his habits of vile dissipation, and he was reduced to the greatest poverty. Here, in the winter of 1846, his wife died.

In August of 1849, he left New York to deliver some lectures in Virginia. On his return, he stopped for a few hours in Baltimore. "Here he met with acquaintances who invited him to drink; all his resolutions and duties were soon forgotten; in a few hours he was in such a state as is commonly induced only by long-continued intoxication; after a night of insanity and exposure, he was carried to a hospital; and there, on the evening of Sunday, the 7th of October, 1849, he died, at the age of thirty-eight years."

Mr. Poe is known chiefly for his criticisms, poems, and tales. In his criticisms he has displayed a keen analysis, a clear discrimination; they are sharp and well-defined, but unfair. Influenced greatly by fear or favor, they are often absurdly contradictory; and through many of them there run a petty spirit of fault-finding, a burning jealousy, a self-complacent egotism. Thus he was led to make absurd charges of plagiarism, while, in his tales, he himself has been guilty of the most shameful species of it. He was a master in the criticism of words and their collocation, but had not sufficient breadth of mind fully to appreciate thought, nor sufficient candor to acknowledge excellence.

In his poems, Mr. Poe has evinced the same subtlety of analysis, the same distinctness, the same deep knowledge of the power of words. Their elaboration is minute, their metre exquisite, both in its adaptation and polish. In this, indeed, lies their principal power; and perhaps a great part of the charm which they have, is a kind of ear-jugglery. They do not move the heart, for of feeling there is an essential want. His poetry, as he himself tells us, is the result of cold, mathematical calculation.

But it is through his tales that Mr. Poe is best known, and in them is displayed the real bent of his genius. Their chief characteristic is a grim horror-sometimes tangible, but usually shadowy and dim. He revelled in faintly sketching scenes of ghastly gloom, in imagining the most impossible plots, and in making them seem real by minute detail. His wild and weird conceptions have great power; but they affect the fears only, rarely the heart; while sometimes his morbid creations are repulsive and shocking; yet, in the path which he has chosen, he is unrivalled.

And now, what shall we say of this man who led such a checkered and wretched life, who hated mankind, and who sought to drown his misery in the intoxicating bowl? What can we say in extenuation of his dissolute character, his entire want of moral principle, his pernicious example? Nothing. He was a victim of his unrestrained appetites and passions. Let us hope that his life will be a warning.

As scarcely any extract could be made from his fictitious writings that would give any just appreciation of them, or be in any way profitable, we confine ourselves to his poetry, and from this take the following, though they have often been given to the public before. He deplores the death of his wife in the beautiful lyric of

ANNABEL LEE.

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived, whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea;

But we loved with a love that was more than love

I and my Annabel Lee

With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her high-born kinsmen' came,
And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre,
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-

Yes!-that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-

And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling-my darling-my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea-

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

'The angels.

THE RAVEN.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore-
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber-door;
""Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber-door-
Only this, and nothing more."

Ah! distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow-sorrow for the lost Lenore-
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore-
Nameless here forevermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me-filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating:
""Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber-door-
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber-door:
This it is, and nothing more."

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
"Sir," said I," or madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber-door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you"-here I opened wide the door-
Darkness there, and nothing more.

1

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore !”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore !"-
Merely this, and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,

Soon again I heard a tapping something louder than before.

46

Surely," said I-" surely that is something at my window lattice; Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore

Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore.

'Tis the wind, and nothing more."

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber-door--
Perched upon a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber-door-

Perched and sat, and nothing more.