Text: Edgar Allan Poe (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), November 29, 1845, vol. 2, no. 21, p. ???, col. ?

[page 321, column 2, continued:]

The Philosophy of Mystery. By Walter Cooper Dendy, Fellow and Honorary Librarian of the Medical Society of London, etc. etc. New York: Harper and Brothers.

This really beautiful volume is No. 3 of Harper's New Miscellany. The style of this series is especially good; the type is of proper size, the paper unusually fine, and the binding (in boards, with embossed muslin,) particularly neat and tasteful. The number of pages in a volume is about 450. In literary character, the books of this series will tend towards the utile rather than the dulce — combining the two as far as possible.

“The Philosophy of Mystery” is an exceedingly able work — far better, we think, than the “Natural Magic” of Brewster — a book of identical purpose carried out in a totally different way. The “Natural Magic” is the more ratiocinative — Mr. Dendy's essay the more poetical, the more imaginative, and to us the more interesting. Seldom, indeed, have we read any book which, for the time, so thoroughly engrossed us.