an unfounded report—­at all events to the report of a wretchedness which I had thought it prudent (since the world regards wretchedness as a crime) so publicly to disavow.  In a word, venturing to judge your noble nature by my own, I felt grieved lest my published denial might cause you to regret what you had done; and my first impulse was to write you, and assure you, even at the risk of doing so too warmly, of the sweet emotion, made up of respect and gratitude alone, with which my heart was filled to overflowing.  While I was hesitating, however, in regard to the propriety of this step, I was overwhelmed by a sorrow so poignant as to deprive me for several weeks of all power of thought or action.  Your letter, now lying before me, tells me that I had not been mistaken in your nature, and that I should not have hesitated to address you; but believe me, my dear Mrs. L——­, that I am already ceasing to regard those difficulties or misfortunes which have led me to even this partial correspondence with yourself.”

For nearly a year Mr. Poe was not often before the public, but he was as industrious, perhaps, as he had been at any time, and early in 1848 advertisement was made of his intention to deliver several lectures, with a view to obtain an amount of money sufficient to establish his so-long-contemplated monthly magazine.  His first lecture—­and only one at this period—­was given at the Society Library, in New York, on the ninth of February, and was upon the cosmogony of the Universe:  it was attended by an eminently intellectual auditory, and the reading of it occupied about two hours and a half; it was what he afterward published under the title of “Eureka, a Prose Poem.”

To the composition of this work he brought his subtlest and highest capacities, in their most perfect development.  Denying that the arcana of the universe can be explored by induction, but informing his imagination with the various results of science, he entered with unhesitating boldness, though with no guide but the divinest instinct,—­that sense of beauty, in which our great Edwards recognizes the flowering of all truth—­into the sea of speculation, and there built up of according laws and their phenomena, as under the influence of a scientific inspiration, his theory of Nature.  I will not attempt the difficult task of condensing his propositions; to be apprehended they must be studied in his own terse and simple language; but in this we have a summary of that which he regards as fundamental:  “The law which we call Gravity,” he says, “exists on account of matter having been radiated, at its origin, atomically, into a limited sphere of space, from one, individual, unconditional irrelative, and absolute Particle Proper, by the sole process in which it was possible to satisfy, at the same time, the two conditions, radiation and equable distribution throughout the sphere—­that is to say, by a force varying in direct proportion with the squares of the distances between the radiated atoms, respectively, and the particular center of radiation.”