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.

THE DOMAIN OF ARNHEIM

"The author's observations on the artificial style,"
continued Ellison, "are less objectionable. A mixture of pure art in a garden scene adds to it a great
beauty. This is just; as also is the reference to the
sense of human interest. The principle expressed is
incontrovertible, but there may be something beyond
it. There may be an object in keeping with the
principle - an object unattainable by the means ordinarily possessed by individuals, yet which, if attained,
would lend a charm to the landscape-garden far surpassing that which a sense of merely human interest
could bestow. A poet, having very unusual pecuniary
resources, might, while retaining the necessary idea
of art, or culture, or, as our author expresses it, of
interest, so imbue his designs at once with extent and
novelty of beauty as to convey the sentiment of spiritual interference. It will be seen that, in bringing
about such result, he secures all the advantages of
interest or design, while relieving his work of the
harshness or technicality of the worldly art. In the
most rugged of wildernesses - in the most savage of
the scenes of pure nature - there is apparent the art
of a creator; yet this art is apparent to reflection only;
in no respect has it the obvious force of a feeling. Now
let us suppose this sense of the Almighty design to
be one step depressed- to be brought into something
like harmony or consistency with the sense of human
art - to form an intermedium between the two: let
us imagine, for example, a landscape whose combined
vastness and definitiveness, whose united beauty,
magnificence, and strangeness, shall convey the idea
of care, or culture, or superintendence, on the part of
beings superior, yet akin to humanity - then the
sentiment of interest is preserved, while the art inter103