It is difficult to comprehend such natures, for they are not common. But, alas for such! They have no choice but to be denizens of this world, and all the rough, sharp angles of rude Humanity seem continually to wound and irritate their sensitiveness, torturing them almost to madness. And yet there is a deep, strong under-current to their lives. There is a beautiful spirituality which leads men to perceive that there is a power in the universe which balances all these inequalities and apparent inharmonies of human beings; and so, although they are set at variance with the world in certain portions of their nature, yet they are rewarded in others. Edgar A. Poe possessed the power of retiring from external things into the mysteries of the spirit. The greatest authors and musical composers the world ever knew, were those whose favorite pursuit so completely absorbed them that all external things were excluded, and they forgot, while their inspirations were upon them, what manner of men they were,--forgot the necessities of the flesh, and all the surroundings of their daily lives. Such men could understand our meaning, when we say that Edgar A. Poe lived much in his inner life, and there, as in the experience of the soul-rapt and inspired Boehmen, glorious revelations of the sublime and the beautiful were made manifest unto him. The common forms of human speech were inadequate for expression; therefore he seized upon the secret harmony of words, and strung them like flashing gems on the golden line of his thought, weaving them into wild, strange metaphors, oftentimes so bewildering and dazzling, that the common mind could only feel the charm without comprehending the mystery. Like Ezekiel in his vision, he beheld the wondrous “living creatures, and the wheels,” and as they were represented, so did he describe them; but the mind of the reader must be in a similar state of illumination in order to clearly understand his meaning. There were seasons when he seemed to enter into a peaceful alliance with earth and all harmonious and beautiful things. Yet when his peculiarly sensitive nature was startled and aroused, he turned back to this Valhalla of his soul, and there he found another element of peace,--a strange, paradoxical peace, which comes through the herculean efforts of the soul to clamber up the rugged heights of destiny,--such peace as is given unto souls, when the angel, with a flaming sword, drives them from the Eden places of this world back into the mysteries of their being, in order that from their bloody sweat and bitter agony they may wring out great songs of moving inspiration, and reveal to mankind generally the wondrous world of ideas and causes which lies beyond the limits of sense and the range of external observation.