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.

LANDOR'S COTTAGE
in the mere excess of art manifested; all that seemed
to have been done might have been done here - with
such natural "capabilities" (as they have it in the
books on Landscape Gardening)- with very little labor
and expense. No, it was not the amount, b'uithe character of the art which caused me to take a seat on one
of the blossomy stones and gaze up and down this fairylike avenue for half an hour or more in bewildered
admiration. One thing became more and more evident the longer I gazed: an artist, and one with a most
scrupulous eye for form, had superintended all these
arrangements. The greatest care had been taken to
preserve a due medium between the neat and graceful
on the one hand, and the pittoresco, in the true sense
of the Italian term, on the other. There were few
straight, and no long uninterrupted, lines. The same
effect of curvature or of color appeared twice, usually,
but not oftener, at any one point of view. Everywhere was variety in uniformity. It was a piece of
"composition," in which the most fastidiously critical
taste could scarcely have suggested an emendation.
I had turned to the right as I entered this road, and
now, arising, I continued in the same direction. The
path was so serpentine that at no moment could I
trace its course for more than two or three paces in
advance. Its character did not undergo any material
change.
'Presently the murmur of water fell gently upon my
ear; and in a few moments afterwards, as I turned
with the road somewhat more abruptly than hitherto,
I became aware that a building of some kind lay at
the foot of a gentle declivity just before me. I could
see nothing distinctly on account of the mist which
occupied all the little valley below. A gentle breeze,
I 5