rare beings whose vast though unconscious goodness and purity of soul send a shower of gladness into the hearts of all with whom they come in contact, and the effect upon the sensitive nature of the poet, whose mental condition from his infancy had evidently been an isolated one, was such as to almost electrify him, and to cause him to think of her rather as a celestial spirit than as of one possessed of the passions and weaknesses of ordinary women. This lady was a Mrs. Stannard, the mother of a school-mate of the young poet. From the moment he met with this lady she became his idol-while she in turn clearly enough appreciated the feelings of her idolater, and entertained a mother's holy love for the boy, united with a reverence for the precocious genius which she would undoubtedly discover in his very demeanour, and more especially in the light of his beautiful eyes, and in the weird tones of his voice-if not in the gravity of much of his speech, which, I have no doubt, such a youth would be noted for. That she should become his confidant, and the theme and inspirer of the songs of such an one, was surely natural; and when I think of some of those songs, and more particularly of the verses addressed to "Helen"-to herself I cannot, also, help yielding my homage to the memory of the woman who

inspired them. Again, I say, this "Helen" of the poet's youth must have been a rare and precious being, and

"What though that light, through storm and night, so trembled from afar,

What could there be more purely bright in Truth's daystar?"

I am not afraid of being misunderstood here by the pure in soul, and all who read the poet's poems are too much struck by their purity and spirituality to believe that they had their inspiration in aught save the very purest of sources. Had it been the lot of this good lady, after the poet's introduction to her, to have lived a few years to have given him the wise counsel, and to have exercised the beneficial influence over him of which she was capable, in all likelihood his after-career would have been a happier, if not in a literary sense a yet brighter one; but this was not to be. She was ordained to appear to him, and disappear like a dream-to shoot like a star through the gloom of his life, only to leave that gloom the more dense from the recollection of the glory by which it had for the moment been illumined. Then, alas, alas, as he in later years sang, with him "the light of life was o'er." And the strain upon his mind

caused by the loss of this guardian spirit was indeed great, and the reaction from which was such as to drive him into courses one can never think

of but with regret. A disposition to eccentricity had repeatedly manifested itself from his infancy upwards, yet there can be no doubt as to the depth of the affliction caused him by the death of "the Helen of his youth," nor as to an impetus being somehow given to the irregularities of which he is accused, some short time after her death. I am aware that a certain Miss Royston is cited as having about this time caused him some trouble through her marriage with another, after having shown some favour to himself; but the eternal burden of his song is that of sorrow for an idol that is dead rather than that of regret or of the pain of wounded pride, caused by the loss or the conduct of one who is yet in the flesh. Moreover, his love is always a pure spiritual love-a love of the soul rather than of the body, however beautiful that body may be painted by his own inimitable pen; and such a love, I hold, is more likely to be inspired in the soul of a precocious genius by a pure-minded mature woman than by any girl in her teens, however charming. These surmises may not in themselves be sufficient to form a key to the apparent inconsistencies

so often laid to the charge of the poet, yet I think they will help to throw some light on the unpleasant subject, and as such ought to be kept in view while we give a hurried glance at his after-career.

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As I have intimated, he was but a mere youth when Mrs. Stannard died-in fact he was a schoolboy-and as such was here and there," as Mr. Stedman says, "till 1826, when he passed a #inter at the University of Virginia. He ended his brief course in the school of ancient and modern languages with a successful examination; but after much dissipation and gambling, which deeply involved him in debt." A rupture, as might have been expected, ensued between him and his guardian-Mr. Allan finally refusing to countenance Edgar's extravagances; and the young man betook himself to his aunt, Mrs. Maria Clemm of Baltimore, in whose house he found a home for about two years, during which time he acted as tutor to his cousin Virginia, who was then a beautiful child, and who afterwards became his wife. In 1829 his foster-mother, Mrs. Allan, died, when a reconciliation was effected between him and Mr. Allan, and he was asked to choose a profession. He chose that of Arms, and found an appointment at West Point; but of this he soon tired-he could not

endure military discipline, and ere long brought about his expulsion, and so again incurred the displeasure of his patron. This gentleman by this time had again married, and as the second wife was likely to have children, and as these children would naturally enough be considered the heirs of their father's possessions, an intimation was given to the effect that in future Edgar must provide for himself. High words are said to have ensued on the occasion, which only served the purpose of ventilating the justly excited anger of Edgar, and of causing the doors of Mr. Allan to be the more securely bolted in future against the young man who, from his boyhood, had been taught to consider Mr. Allan's house as his own home. He now published a volume of poems, some of which had been printed while he yet stayed with his aunt, chiefly valuable as containing the germs of several of his later masterpieces. Two or three of them, however, have a positive value-such as the "Sonnet to Science," and more especially his verses beginning, "Helen, thy beauty is to me," and that exquisite lyric in Aalraaf beginning "Ligeia, Ligeia, my beautiful one, whose harshest idea will to melody run." Indeed, up to this period I am not aware of any verses produced by an American that would bear comparison for pure poetic power with these two