And such a one was he of whom we speak to-night,--that erratic genius, EDGAR A. POE. The mysteries of Godliness,--not of morality, as the world understands it,--confounded him. He could see more clearly than most of men. He looked out into the vast arcana of Nature, and his soul trembled before the majestic revelation. He knew not how to express, in any adequate form of speech, those great and mighty thoughts which rose and shone, like stars of wondrous beauty, in his soul; he knew not how to give his burning inspirations a manifestation through his life and being. Edgar A. Poe was a medium. “A medium!” you say. “He himself would scorn the name; and we, who knew him, deny it.” But of what was he a medium? We do not confine ourselves to that definition of the term given by modern Spiritualists. He was a medium for the general inspiration which sets like a current of living fire through the universe. No special, no individual spirit wrought directly upon him, but he felt the might and majesty of occult forces from the world of causes, and trembled beneath their influence. He was a medium, not to disembodied spirits, only so far as mind acts upon mind by the great law of unity, and in the same way was he psychologically affected by spirits in the body. He had a peculiarly sensitive and impressible nature, and in the mysteries of a spirituality which he did not seek to comprehend, he was easily wrought upon by the minds around him. Not but what he possessed self-will; not, indeed, that he lacked that firmness, whereby, when his soul was aroused, he could repel such influences. But his nature was so finely strung that every harsh word, every unkindly discord, grated and thrilled through his entire being, so that oftentimes it would seem as though he would beat down the wall of clay to give his spirit freedom, and to escape forever from the inharmonious influences of the world,--from the presence of those by whom he was so little understood.