BY EDGAR A. POE. NEW-YORK: GEO. P. PUTNAM, OF LATE FIRM OF “WILEY & PUTNAM,” 155 BROADWAY. MDCCCXLVIII. Entered , according to Act of Congress, in the year 1848, By EDGAR A. POE, In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New-York. Leavitt, Trow & Co Prs., 33 Ann-street. WITH VERY PROFOUND RESPECT, This Work is Dedicated TO ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT....

To the few who love me and whom I love—to those who feel rather than to those who think—to the dreamers and those who put faith in dreams as in the only realities—I offer this Book of Truths, not in its character of Truth-Teller, but for the Beauty that abounds in its Truth; constituting it true. To these I present the composition as an Art-Product alone:—let us say as a Romance; or, if I be not urging too lofty a claim, as a Poem. What I here propound is true :—therefore it cannot die:—or if by

It is with humility really unassumed—it is with a sentiment even of awe—that I pen the opening sentence of this work: for of all conceivable subjects I approach the reader with the most solemn—the most comprehensive—the most difficult—the most august. What terms shall I find sufficiently simple in their sublimity—sufficiently sublime in their simplicity—for the mere enunciation of my theme? I design to speak of the Physical, Metaphysical and Mathematical—of the Material and Spiritual Universe:—o