Eugene Aram — Volume 05Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
General
Eugene Aram — Volume 05
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
Aram, Eugene, 1704-1759 -- Fiction
"My Lord, my Lord--must some of the living be made answerable for all the
bones that earth has concealed and chance exposed? The skull that has
been produced, has been declared fractured. But who can surely tell
whether it was the cause or the consequence of death. In May, 1732 the
remains of William Lord Archbishop of this province were taken up by
permission in their cathedral, the bones of the skull were found broken
as these are. Yet he died by no violence! by no blow that could have
caused that fracture. Let it be considered how easily the fracture on the
skull produced is accounted for. At the dissolution of religious houses,
the ravages of the times affected both the living and the dead. In search
after imaginary treasures, coffins were broken, graves and vaults dug
open, monuments ransacked, shrines demolished, Parliament itself was
called in to restrain these violations. And now are the depredations, the
iniquities of those times, to be visited on this? But here, above all,
was a castle vigorously besieged; every spot around was the scene of a
sally, a conflict, a flight, a pursuit. Where the slaughtered fell, there
were they buried. What place is not burial earth in war? How many bones
must still remain in the vicinity of that siege, for futurity to
discover! Can you, then, with so many probable circumstances, choose the
one least probable? Can you impute to the living what Zeal in its fury
may have done; what Nature may have taken off and Piety interred, or what
War alone may have destroyed, alone deposited?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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