There can be no question but that Edgar Poe possessed much subtlety of thought; an acute reasoning faculty; imagination of a gloomy character, and a remarkable power of analysis. This last quality, which from its frequent use almost verges upon disease, pervades nearly all his stories, and is in effect his main characteristic. Other persons have drawn as unreservedly from the depths of horror. But few others, with the exception of Browne and Godwin, have devoted themselves to that curious persevering analysis of worldly mysteries by which Poe has earned so large a portion of his reputation. The impression made upon the mind of the reader by the apparently wonderful solutions of the most difficult problems will not easily be forgotten. Yet, on examining the marvel more attentively, he will divest himself of a good deal of his admiration, by reflecting (as Dr. Griswold justly observes) that the ingenuity is displayed "in unraveling a web which has been woven for the express purpose of unraveling." Every man, in fact, is able readily to explain the riddle which he himself has fabricated, however laborious the process of manufacturing it may have been.

How far the thrilling interest which Poe infused into his stories may be traced to the acute sensations which he himself endured in a state of excitement or despondency, we have no means of knowing. But we think that no writer would have resorted so incessantly to the violent measures and extreme distresses which constitute the subject of his narratives, in a good sound condition of health. His imagination appears to have been absolutely embarrassed by a profusion of visionary alarms and horrors. We rise up from his pages as from the spectacle of

Edgar Poe had no humor, properly so called. His laugh was feeble, or it was a laugh of ill-temper, exhibiting little beyond the turbulence of his own mind. He was carping and sarcastic, and threw out occasionally a shower of sharp words upon the demerits of his contemporaries; but of that genial humor which shines through a character, fixes it in a class, and shows by what natural gradations it moves, and by what aspects and impulses it claims to resemble the large brotherhood of man, he possessed nothing. The ordinary incidents of life-the domestic. affections, the passions, the intermixture of good and evil, of strength and weakness, in the great human family who pass by our doors every day, and who sit beside us, love us, serve us, maltreat us (as the varying mood prompts) were unknown to him, or disregarded. Yet these things constitute the staple-the best and most essential parts of the modern novel. They intrude themselves, in fact, into our acquaintance, so frequently, so intimately, that we can not ignore their existence. In the present case, we are at a loss to understand how a person so acute as our author could have neglected to place upon record what must have so incessantly forced itself upon his observation; nay, what must have met and jostled him so frequently in his rough journey through life.

Of the tales in which the analytical power of the author is more obviously exerted, the least unpleasant are "The Purloined Letter," and "The Golden Bug." "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," and "The Mystery of Marie Roget," are, like too many of his other fictions, saturated with blood. In order that the reader may satisfy his curiosity as to the construction of these plots, the stories themselves must be read. It is quite impossible, in the space at present at our command, to transcribe either of these stories and without such complete transcription the mysterious minute details, in which and in the tracing and solution of which the merit resides, can not be explained. We elect, therefore, to take our extract from a sketch in which another quality of the author's mind can be shown.

"We had now been about ten minutes upon the top of Helseggen, to which we had ascended from the interior of Lofoden, so that we had caught no glimpse of the sea until it had burst upon us from the summit. As the old man spoke, I became aware of a loud and gradually increasing sound, like the moaning of a vast herd of buffaloes upon an American prairie; and at the same moment I perceived that what seamen term the chopping character of the ocean beneath us was rapidly changing into a current which set to the eastward. Even while I gazed, this current acquired a monstrous velocity. Each moment added to its speed-to its headlong impetuosity. In five minutes the whole sea, as far as Vurrgh, was lashed into ungovernable fury; but it was between Moskoe and the coast that the main uproar held its sway. Here the vast bed of the waters, seamed and scarred into a thousand conflicting channels, burst suddenly into frensied convulsion-heaving, boiling, hissinggyrating in gigantic and innumerable vortices, and all whirling and plunging on to the eastward with a rapidity which water never elsewhere assumes, except in precipitous descents. "In a few minutes more, there came over the scene another radical alteration. The general surface grew somewhat more smooth, and the whirlpools, one by one, disappeared, while prodigious streaks of foam became apparent where none had been seen before. These streaks, at length, spreading out to a great distance, and entering into combination, took unto themselves the gyratory motion of the subsided vortices, and seemed to form the germ of another more vast. Suddenly-very suddenly-this assumed a distinct and definite existence, in a circle of more than a mile in diameter. The edge of the whirl was represented by a broad belt of gleaming spray; but no particle of this slipped into the mouth of the terrific funnel, whose interior, as far as the eye could fathom it, was a smooth, shining, and jet-black wall of water, inclined to the horizon at an angle of some forty-five degrees, speeding dizzily round and round with a swaying and sweltering motion, and sending forth to the winds an appalling voice, half shriek, half roar, such as not even the mighty cataract of Niagara ever lifts up in its agony to Heaven. "The mountain trembled to its very base, and the rock rocked. I threw myself upon my face, and clung to the scant herbage in an excess of nervous agitation.

"This,' said I at length, to the old manthis can be nothing else than the great whirlpool of the Malestrom.'

"So it is sometimes termed,' said he. 'We Norwegians call it the Moskoe-strom, from the

island of Moskoe in the midway.'”—Vol. i. pp. 163, 164.

"You have had a good look at the whirl," says the old man, "and now I'll tell you a story that will convince you Moskoe-ström." And he accordingly tells that I ought to know something of the him how he and his brothers, having been out fishing one day, three years ago, and being about to return home, but having mistaken the hour, were met by an adverse wind. It was fresh on their starboard quarter, and favorable when they set out, but all at once they were taken aback by an unusual breeze from over Helseggen. They could not make way, and one of them was proposing to return to their anchorage, when they observed the whole of the horizon covered with a singular copper-colored cloud, that "rose with the most amazing velocity." In a minute the storm was upon them. The masts went by the board, taking with them the narrator's younger brother. He and his elder brother, however, cling to the bark.

"For some moments we were completely deluged, as I say, and all this time I held my breath, and clung to the bolt. When I could stand it no longer I raised myself upon my knees, still keeping hold with my hands, and thus got my head clear. Presently our little boat gave herself a shake, just as a dog does in coming out of the water, and thus rid herself, in some measure, of the seas. I was now trying to get the better of the stupor that had come over me, and to collect my senses so as to see what was to be done, when I felt somebody grasp my arm. It was my elder brother, and my heart leaped for joy, for I had made sure that he was overboard-but the next moment all this joy was turned into horror-for he put his mouth close to my ear, and screamed out the word, "Moskoe-ström !”

"No one ever will know what my feelings were at that moment. I shook from head to foot as if I had had the most violent fit of the ague. I knew what he meant by that one word well enough-I knew what he wished to make me understand. With the wind that now drove us on, we were bound for the whirl of the Strom, and nothing could save us!

"You perceive that in crossing the Ström channel, we always went a long way up above the whirl, even in the calmest weather, and then had to wait and watch carefully for the slack-but now we were driving right upon the

They are now within a quarter of a mile of the Moskoe-Ström. They recognize the place, but it is no more like the every-day whirlpool than the whirlpool it self is like a mill-race.

"It could not have been more than two minutes afterwards when we suddenly felt the waves subside, and were enveloped in foam. The boat made a sharp half turn to larboard, | and then shot off in its new direction like a thunderbolt. At the some moment the roaring noise of the water was completely drowned in a kind of shrill shriek-such a sound as you might imagine given out by the water-pipes of many thousand steam-vessels, letting off their steam all together. We were now in the belt of surf that always surrounds the whirl; and I thought, of course, that another moment would plunge us into the abyss-down which we could only see indistinctly on account of the amazing velocity with which we were borne along. The boat did not seem to sink into the water at all, but to skim like an air-bubble upon the surface of the surge. Her starboard side was next the whirl, and on the larboard arose the world of ocean we had left. It stood like a huge writhing wall between us and the horizon.

As we

How often we made the circuit of the belt it is impossible to say. We careered round and round for perhaps an hour, flying rather than floating, getting gradually more and more into the middle of the surge, and then nearer and nearer to its horrible inner edge. All this time I had never left go of the ring-bolt. My brother was at the stern, holding on to a small empty water-cask which had been securely lashed under the coop of the counter, and was the only thing on deck that had not been swept overboard when the gale first took us. approached the brink of the pit he let go his hold upon this, and made for the ring, from which, in the agony of his terror, he endeavored to force my hands, as it was not large enough to afford us both a secure grasp. I never felt deeper grief than when I saw him attempt this act-although I knew he was a madman when he did it-a raving maniac through sheer fright. I did not care, however, to contest the point with him. I knew it could make no difference, whether either of us held on at all; so I let him have the bolt, and went astern to the cask. This there was no great difficulty in doing; for the smack flew round steadily enough, and upon an even keel-only swaying to and fro, with the immense sweeps and swelters of 'the whirl. Scarcely had I secured myself in my new posi

"As I felt the sickening sweep of the descent, I had instinctively tightened my hold upon the barrel, and closed my eyes. For some seconds I dared not open them-while I expected instant destruction, and wondered that I was not already in my death-struggles with I still lived. The sense of falling had ceased; the water. But moment after moment elapsed. and the motion of the vessel seemed much as it had been before, while in the belt of foam, with the exception that she now lay more along. I took courage and looked once again upon the scene.

"Never shall I forget the sensation of awe, horror, and admiration with which I gazed about me. The boat appeared to be hanging, as if by magic, midway down, upon the interior surface of a funnel vast in circumference, prodigious in depth, and whose perfectly smooth sides might have been mistaken for ebony, but for the bewildering rapidity with which they spun around, and for the gleaming and ghastly radiance they shot forth, as the rays of the full moon, from that circular rift amid the clouds which I have already described, streamed in a flood of golden glory along the black walls and far away down into the inmost recesses of the abyss.

"At first I was too much confused to observe any thing accurately. The general burst of terrific grandeur was all that I beheld. When I recovered myself a little, however, my gaze fell instinctively downwards. In this direction I was able to obtain an unobstructed view, from the manner in which the smack hung on the inclined surface of the pool. She was quite upon an even keel-that is to say, her deck lay in a plane parallel with that of the water-but this latter sloped at an angle of more than forty-five degrees, so that we seemed to be lying upon our beam-ends. I could not help observing, nevertheless, that I had scarcely more difficulty in maintaining my hold and footing in this situation, than if we had been upon a dead level; and this, I suppose, was owing to the speed at which we revolved.

"The rays of the moon seemed to search the very bottom of the profound gulf; but still I could make out nothing distinctly, on account of a thick mist in which every thing there was enveloped, and over which there hung a magnificent rainbow, like that narrow and tottering bridge which Mussulmen say is the only pathway between Time and Eternity. This mist, or spray, was no doubt occasioned by the clashing of the great walls of the funnel, as they all met together at the bottom-but the yell that went up to the heavens from out of that mist, I dare not attempt to describe.

"Our first slide into the abyss itself, from the belt of foam above, had carried us to a great distance down the slope; but our farther descent was by no means proportionate. Round