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 transmission 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,
that 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 house 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.
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