Page:Eugene Aram vol 3 - Lytton (1832).djvu/216

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208
EUGENE ARAM.

all places in the world, can we think of any one, except indeed the church-yard, where there is so great a certainty of finding- human bones, as a hermitage? In times past, the hermitage was a place, not only of religious retirement, but of burial. And it has scarce, or never been heard of, but that every cell now known, contains, or contained these relics of humanity; some mutilated—some entire! Give me leave to remind your Lordship, that here sat Solitary sanctity, and here the hermit and the anchorite hoped that repose for their bones when dead, they here enjoyed when living. I glance over a few of the many evidences that these cells were used as repositories of the dead, and enumerate a few of the many caves similar in origin to St. Robert's, in which human bones have been found." Here the prisoner instanced, with remarkable felicity, several places, in which bones had been found, under circumstances, and in spots analogous to those in point.[1] And the reader,

  1. See his published defence.