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remedy for existing ills short of a severance of the ties which bound
South Carolina to the other States--that Mr. Calhoun advocated the
doctrine of nullification, which he proclaimed to be peaceful, to be
within the limits of State power, not to disturb the Union, but only
to be the means of bringing the agent before the tribunal of the
States for their judgment.
Secession belongs to a different class of remedies. It is to be
justified upon the basis that the States are sovereign. There was a
time when none denied it. I hope the time may come again when a better
comprehension of the theory of our Government, and the inalienable
rights of the people of the States, will prevent any one from denying
that each State is a sovereign, and thus may reclaim the grants which
it has made to any agent whomsoever. . .
In the course of my service here, associated at different times with a
great variety of Senators, I see now around me some with whom I have
served long; there have been points of collision, but, whatever of
offence there has been to me, I leave here. I carry with me no hostile
remembrance. Whatever offence I have given which has not been
redressed, or for which satisfaction has not been demanded, I have,
Senators, in this hour of our parting, to offer you my apology for any
pain which, in the heat of the discussion, I have inflicted. I go
hence unencumbered by the remembrance of any injury received, and
having discharged the duty of making the only reparation in my power
for any injury offered.
Mr. President and Senators, having made the announcement which the
occasion seemed to me to require, it only remains for me to bid you a
final adieu.
FOOTNOTE:
[16] By Permission of Mrs. Davis.
EDGAR ALLAN POE.
~1809=1849.~
EDGAR ALLAN POE was born in Boston while his parents were filling a
theatrical engagement there. His father's family was of Baltimore, his
grandfather being Gen. David Poe of the Revolutionary War, and his
father, also named David Poe, having been born and reared in that
city. His mother, whose maiden name was Elizabeth Arnold, was an
English actress of fascinating beauty and manners.
Left an orphan in 1811, Edgar was adopted by Mr. John Allan, a wealthy
merchant of Richmond, and was educated at private schools and the
University of Virginia, and in 1830 he entered West Point. But he got
himself dismissed the next year and devoted himself thereafter to a
literary life. Mr. Allan declining to aid him further, he had a
wretched struggle for existence.
He seems to have gone to Baltimore and made acquaintance with some of
his relatives; and there he won a prize of $100 by a story, "MS. Found
in a Bottle," and was kindly helped by John Pendleton Kennedy. He
became editor of the "Southern Literary Messenger," in Richmond, and
was afterward engaged on various other magazines, writing stories,
poems, book-reviews, and paragraphs, in untiring abundance.
He married his cousin, Virginia Clemm, in 1836, and their life
together was in itself ideally happy, like the life in the Valley of
the Many-Coloured Grass; and Mrs. Clemm, his aunt and mother-in-law,
was the good genius who watched over "her two strange children" with
an unwearying devotion, deserving the tribute of the love and
gratitude embalmed in his sonnet called "Mother."
His engagement with any one magazine rarely lasted long, and there is
much diversity of opinion as to the cause; some ascribing it to Poe's
dissipated, irregular habits and irritable temper, others to the
meagre support of the magazines, still others to Poe's restless
disposition and desire to establish a periodical of his own. His
uncontrolled and high-strung nature, so sensitive that a single glass
of wine or swallow of opium caused temporary insanity, the
uncertainty of his means of subsistence, his wife's frail health and
her death in 1847, were causes sufficient to render unsteady even a
more solid character than Poe seems to have possessed.
His writings produced a great sensation. When "The Raven" was
published in 1845, a friend said of its effect in New York, "Everybody
has been raven-mad about his last poem." Mrs. Browning wrote that an
acquaintance of hers who had a bust of Pallas could not bear to look
at it. His fame is as great, or perhaps greater in Europe than in
America, especially in France; and his works have been translated into
French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Russian.
He died in Baltimore from causes never certainly known, his last
almost unconscious days being spent in a hospital; his dying words
were, "Lord, help my poor soul." He is buried in Westminster
churchyard, and in 1875 a monument was erected over his grave by the
teachers of Baltimore, generously aided by Mr. G. W. Childs of
Philadelphia. A memorial to him has been placed in the Metropolitan
Museum, New York, by the actors of the United States.
No poet has been the subject of more conflicting opinions as to his
life, habits, character, and genius, than Poe. The best lives of him
are those by John H. Ingram, an Englishman, and George E. Woodberry in
the American Men of Letters Series.
WORKS.
Poems.
Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque.
Literati of New York.
Conchologist's First Book (condensed from Wyatt).
Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.
Raven and other Poems.
Eureka, a Prose Poem.
Gold Bug, Balloon Hoax, &c.
All his best known stories are highly artistic in finish, powerful in
theme, and often of such a nature as to make one shudder and avoid
them. "Israfel" is considered one of his most beautiful poems, and if
his self-consciousness could have allowed him to omit the last stanza,
it would have been without a flaw.
TO HELEN.
Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That, gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.
On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.
Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand!
The agate lamp within thy hand,
Ah! Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land!
ISRAFEL.
_And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lute, and who has
the sweetest voice of all God's creatures._--_Koran._
In Heaven a spirit doth dwell
"Whose heart-strings are a lute;"
None sing so wildly well
As the angel Israfel,
And the giddy stars (so legends tell)
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
Of his voice, all mute.
Tottering above
In her highest noon,
The enamored moon
Blushes with love,
While, to listen, the red levin
(With the rapid Pleiades, even,
Which were seven)
Pauses in Heaven.
And they say (the starry choir
And the other listening things)
That Israfeli's fire
Is owing to that lyre
By which he sits and sings--
The trembling living wire
Of those unusual strings.
But the skies that angel trod,
Where deep thoughts are a duty--
Where Love's a grown-up God--
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