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
however, now arose, as the sun was about descend.
ing; and while I remained standing on the brow of
the slope, the fog gradually became dissipated into
wreaths, and so floated over the scene.
As it came fully into view - thus gradually as I
describe it -piece by piece, here a tree, there a
glimpse of water, and here again the summit of a
chimney, I could scarcely help fancying that the
whole was one of the ingenious illusions sometimes
exhibited under the name of "vanishing pictures.'
By the time, however, that the fog had thoroughly
disappeared, the sun had made its way down behind
the gentle hills, and thence, as if with a slight chassez
to the south, had come again fully into sight; glaring
with a purplish lustre through a chasm that entered
the valley from the west. Suddenly, therefore -and
as if by the hand of magic - this whole valley and
everything in it became brilliantly visible.
The first coupi dceil, as the sun slid into the position described, impressed me very much as I have
been impressed, when a boy, by the concluding scene
of some well-arranged theatrical spectacle or melodrama. Not even the monstrosity of color was wanting; for the sunlight came out through the chasm,
tinted all orange and purple; while the vivid green
of the grass in the valley was reflected more or less
upon all objects, from the curtain of vapor that still
hung overhead, as if loath to take its total departure
from a scene so enchantingly beautiful.
The little vale, into which I thus peered down from
under the fog-canopy, could not have been more than
four hundred yards long; while in breadth it varied
from fifty to one hundred and fifty, or perhaps two
hundred. It was most narrow at its northern extremity,
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