The works of Edgar Allan Poe; newly collected and edited, with a memoir, critical introductions, and notes, by Edmund Clarence Stedman and George Edward Woodberry; the illustrations by Albert Edward Sterner.

TALES OF NATURAL BEAUTY
nine hundred and eighty-six per day; or one thousand
five hundred and forty-one per hour; or six and twenty
dollars for every minute that flew. Thus the usual
track of supposition was thoroughly broken up. Men
knew not what to imagine. There were some who even
conceived that Mr. Ellison would divest himself of at
least one-half of his fortune, as of utterly superfluous
opulence - enriching whole troops of his relatives by
division of his superabundance. To the nearest of
these he did, in fact, abandon the very unusual wealth
which was his own before the inheritance.
I was not surprised, however, to perceive that he
had long made up his mind on a point which had
occasioned so much discussion to his friends. Nor
was I greatly astonished at the nature of his decision.
In regard to individual charities he had satisfied his
conscience. In the possibility of any improvement,
properly so called, being effected by man himself in
the general condition of man, he had (I am sorry to
confess it) little faith. Upon the whole, whether
happily or unhappily, he was thrown back, in very
great measure, upon self.
In the widest and noblest sense he was a poet.
He comprehended, moreover, the true character, the
august aims, the supreme majesty and dignity of the
poetic sentiment. The fullest, if not the sole proper
satisfaction of this sentiment he instinctively felt to
lie in the creation of novel forms of beauty. Some
peculiarities, either in his early education or in the
nature of his intellect, had tinged with what is termed
materialism all his ethical speculations; and it was
this bias, perhaps, which led him to believe that the
most advantageous at least, if not the sole legitimate,
field for the poetic exercise lies in the creation of novel
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