a singular posture, flinging stones to the best of their ability. Here the defendants were observed to smile. The Lictor then went on to state, that the prisoners were standing on the stairs of the Capitol, stooping forward, and casting stones from between their legs. The Prætor asked if he had anything more to add to his statement; he replied in the negative. The prisoners were then called on for their defence. Fabius, who was the spokesman of the party, said, that he and his companions could certainly not deny the fact; but they based their defence on another ground, namely, that the flinging of stones at that hour, and for the purposes which they had in view, could in no way be construed into a statutable offence.

PRETOR. On what grounds do you justify it?

'FABIUS. It can scarcely be unknown to your lordship that the Roman name is likely to perish for ever from the face of the earth. 'PRETOR. Has the man seen a Nymph ?-What has this to do with the question in hand?

FABIUS. Everything, O judge! If you will but grant me a patient hearing I will proceed to explain. My companions and I were trying like Deucalion and Pyrrha, to renew the human race.

The Magistrate was here about to address the prisoners in a violent strain of invective, for daring to insult the bench with a legend which, in his idea, had never existed; but the clerk arose from his seat, and entreated a moment's consultation with him. In a few minutes he proceeded, "I cannot, O accused, deny the truth of the tale which you have just given voice to. But by your conduct, you either intended to call the policy of the government in question, an affair of no small moment in a newly-born city,—or, taking the milder view of the question,-you must all three have been intoxicated at the time." The defendants admitted the justice of the remark.

'PRÆTOR. You, then, O Fabius and Lartius, I fine in five asses a-piece, or, in default of payment, adjudge you to a fortnight's hard labour at the Mill. But on Manlius rests a heavier stain. How long, O Manlius, wilt thou abuse our patience? How long shall this madness of thine escape unpunished? When will this unbridled boldness of thine come to an end? What, then-does not the watch nightly sit at the Capitol? Does not the police of the city,-does not the fear of the people, do not the devoted meetings of the sober citizens,-does not this very spot on which my chair rests, guarded as it is by an efficient police, do none, I say, of these things make you blush, and lose your countenance? With all these omens about you, with the city flourishing as it does, has it never occurred to your mind that you are ruining your constitution, disgusting your friends, and leading your associates to destruction. I fine you in ten asses, and, in default of payment, adjudge you to one month's hard labour. And let me warn you, that if you persist in your dissolute course, I will no longer permit you to escape by the payment of a sum of money.'

Thus ends this interesting trial. I may perhaps, if this paper should attract the notice which from these valuable extracts it deserves, proceed with them, before laying the whole in a more compendious form before the world. For the information of the curious, I may as well mention that the MS. alluded to is marked H. U. M. in the Corpus Library.

158

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER.

DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was-but, with the first glimpse of the building a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me-upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain-upon the bleak walls-upon the va cant eye-like windows-upon a few rank sedges-and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees-with an utter depression of soul, which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium-the bitter lapse into common life-the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart,-an unredeemed dreariness of thought, which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it-I paused to think--what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while beyond doubt there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the reason and the analysis of this power lie among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be suffi cient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn, that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down-but with a shudder even more thrilling than before-upon the re-modelled and inverted images of the grey sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.

Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our last meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant part of the country-a letter from him—which, in its wildly importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply. The MS. gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily illness; of a pitiable mental idiosyncrasy which oppressed him; and of an earnest desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his only personal friend, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society, some alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in which all this, and much more, was said -it was the apparent heart that went with his request-which

allowed me no room for hesitation, and I accordingly obeyed what I still considered a very singular summons forthwith.

Although as boys we had been even intimate associates, yet I really knew little, of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been noted, time out of mind. for a peculiar sensibility of temperament, displaying itself through long ages in many works of exalted art, and manifested of late in repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily recognisable beauties of musical science. I have learned, too, the very remarkable fact that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honoured as it was, had put forth at no period any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain. It was this deficiency, I considered, while running over in thought the perfect keeping of the character of the premises with the accredited character of the people, and while speculating upon the possible influence which the one in the long lapse of centuries might have exercised upon the other-it was this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating transmis. sion from sire to son of the patrimony with the name, which had at length so identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the House of Usher,' -an appellation which seemed to include in the minds of the peasantry who used it both the family and the family mansion.

I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment of looking down within the tarn had been to deepen the first singular impression. There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition-for why should I not so term it ?-served mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I have long known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis. And it might have been for this reason only, that when I again uplifted my eyes to the nouse itself, from its image in the pool, there grew in my mind a strange fancy-a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I but mention it to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed me. I had so worked upon my imagin. ation as really to believe that around about the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity-an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the grey wall, and the silent tarn, in the form of an inelastic vapour or gas, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued. Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the utterly porous and evidently decayed condition of the individual stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the specious totality of old woodwork, which has rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with

no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have. discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zig. zag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.

Noticing these things I rode over a short causeway to the house. A servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of the hall. A valet of stealthy step thence conducted me in silence through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the studio of his master. Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken. While the objects around me-while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies, which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which I had been accustomed from my infancy. While I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this, I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up. On one of the staircases I met the physician of the family. His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity. He accosted me with trepidation, and passed on. The valet now threw open a door, and ushered me into the presence of his master.

The room in which I found myself was very large, and excessively lofty. The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trelliced panes, and served to render suffi. ciently distinct the more prominent objects around. The eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies

hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfort

I

less, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over, and pervaded all.

Upon my entrance Usher arose from a sofa upon which he had been lying at full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth, which had much in it. I at first thought of an overdone cordiality -of the constrained effort of the ennuyé man of the world. A glance, however, at his countenance convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We sat down; and for some moments, while he spoke not, I gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely man had never before so terribly altered in so brief a period as had Roderick Usher! It was with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan being before me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet the character of his face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin, and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely-moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence. of a want of moral energy; hair of a more

than web-like softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. And now, in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eye, above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as in its wild gossamer texture it floated rather than fell about the face, I could not even with effort connect its arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.

In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence an inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy, an excessive nervous agitation. For something of this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter than by remi niscences of certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical conformation and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic concision-that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation-that leaden, self balanced, and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may be observed in the moments of the intensest excitement of the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium.

It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him. He entered at some length into what he conceived to be the nature of his malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he despaired to find a remedy-a mere nervous affection, he immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off. It displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations. Some of these, as he detailed them, interested and bewildered me—although, perhaps, the terms, and the general manner of the narration had their weight. He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odours of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror.

To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave. 'I shall perish,' said he, 'I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the future, not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial incident, which may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect-in terror. In this unnerved-in this pitiable condition-I feel that I must inevitably abandon life and reason together in my struggles with some fatal demon of fear.'

I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and from which for many years he had