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stated, but he appears to have entered life in the character of a poor scholar. Having adopted the business of teaching, he devoted himself to the acquisition of knowledge with an ardour equalling that of the most distinguished scholars. After acting as an usher in various situations, he had settled, in 1734, at Knaresborough, where, eleven years after, he committed the crime for which he was now apprehended. By an early and imprudent marriage, he had added to the embarrassment of his circumstances; yet his pursuit of knowledge continued unabated. When we learn that the man who associated with such low persons as Clarke and Houseman, was deeply skilled in the ancient and modern languages, including the Hebrew, Arabic, and Celtic; and was alike conversant in the belles-lettres, in antiquities, and in several branches of modern science, our wonder amounts almost to disbelief; yet there can be no doubt of the fact. He had even, before his apprehension, advanced a great way in a comparative polyglot lexicon, upon a new, and, for that age, profound plan; in which it seems not unlikely that, if it had been carried into effect, he might have anticipated some of the honours of the German philologists. He had also composed several tracts upon British antiquities. In a fiction grounded upon his story, by one of the most delightful of modern novelists, his thirst for knowledge is seized with admirable art as a means of palliating his crime: he is there represented as entering into the base plans of his accomplices, for the purpose of supplying the means of study. But no such motive can be traced in his real story, which simply sets him down as a remarkable example of capacity and talent, degraded and lost through moral infirmity. Yet, even while we execrate the atrocious guilt of Aram, such is the homage we naturally yield to intellectual superiority, such the sympathy we accord to the painful struggles of a mind devoted to knowledge, that he has never been reckoned one of the herd of

ordinary criminals. In Caulfield's Portraits, there is a genuine likeness of this singular man-an intellectual

but melancholy countenance, forming a touching commentary on his history.

At the trial of Aram, which took place before the York Assizes, on the 3d of August 1759, Richard Houseman was admitted as king's evidence, and gave a minute narration of the murder, slightly distorted, it was supposed, in order to lighten his own share of blame. According to the witness, Clarke had received his wife's fortune, amounting to L.160, on the night before he was murdered. He called at Aram's with this sum in his pocket, and also carrying the plate which he had obtained among his friends. He and Houseman, at the request of Aram, walked out in the direction of St Robert's Cave, where the party had no sooner arrived, than Aram knocked down Clarke and murdered him. Houseman, according to his own account, then retired; but it afterwards appeared that he had assisted in burying the body in the cave. The clothes of the murdered man were brought to Aram's house and burnt, but not without betraying the secret to Mrs Aram. After this, and other evidence had been given, Aram delivered a written defence, in which he endeavoured, by the exercise of much ingenuity and a show of curious learning, to make up for the want of living exculpatory evidence.

First, my lord, the whole tenor of my conduct in life contradicts every particular of this indictment; yet I had never said this, did not my present circumstances extort it from me, and seem to make it necessary. Permit me here, my lord, to call upon malignity itself, so long and cruelly busied in this prosecution, to charge upon me any immorality, of which prejudice was not the author. No, my lord, I concerted no schemes of fraud, projected no violence, injured no man's person or property. My days were honestly laborious, my nights intensely studious; and I humbly conceive my notice of this, especially at this time, will not be thought impertinent or unseasonable, but at least deserving some attention: because, my lord, that any person, after a temperate use of life, a series of thinking and acting regularly, and without one

single deviation from sobriety, should plunge into the very depth of profligacy precipitately and at once, is altogether improbable and unprecedented, and absolutely inconsistent with the course of things. Mankind is never corrupted at once; villainy is always progressive, and declines from right, step by step, till every regard of probity is lost, and every sense of all moral obligation totally perishes.

Again, my lord, a suspicion of this kind, which nothing but malevolence could entertain, and ignorance propagate, is violently opposed by my very situation at that time with respect to health; for, but a little space before, I had been confined to my bed, and suffered under a very long and severe disorder, and was not able, for half a year together, so much as to walk. The distemper left me indeed, yet slowly and in part; but so macerated, so enfeebled, that I was reduced to crutches, and was so far from being well about the time I am charged with this fact, that I never till this day perfectly recovered. Could, then, a person in this condition take anything into his head so unlikely, so extravagant? I, past the vigour of my age, feeble and valetudinary, with no inducement to engage, no ability to accomplish, no weapon wherewith to perpetrate such a fact; without interest, without power, without motive, without means.

'Besides, it must needs occur to every one that an action of this atrocious nature is never heard of, but, when its springs are laid open it appears that it was to support some indolence, or supply some luxury; to satisfy some avarice, or oblige some malice; to prevent some real or some imaginary want; yet I lay not under the influence of any one of these. Surely, my lord, I may, consistent with both truth and modesty, affirm thus much; and none who have any veracity, and knew me, will ever question this.'

[He then endeavours, by instances, to shew that the disappearance of a man is but an imperfect argument for the supposition of his being dead.]

'Permit me next, my lord, to observe a little upon the

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bones which have been discovered. It is said, which perhaps is saying very far, that these are the skeleton of a man. It is possible, indeed, they may; but is there any certain known criterion which incontestably distinguishes the sex in human bones? Let it be considered, my lord, whether the ascertaining of this point ought not to precede any attempt to identify them.

"The place of their depositum, too, claims much more attention than is commonly bestowed upon it; for of all places in the world, none could have mentioned any one, wherein there was greater certainty of finding human bones, than a hermitage, except he should point out a church-yard: hermitages, in time past, being not only places of religious retirement, but of burial too. And it has scarcely ever been heard of, but that every cell now known contains, or contained, these relics of humanity; some mutilated, and some entire. I do not inform, but give me leave to remind your lordship, that here sat solitary sanctity, and here the hermit, or the anchoress, hoped that repose for their bones, when dead, they here enjoyed when living.

1. The bones, as was supposed, of the Saxon St Dubritius, were discovered buried in his cell at Guy's Cliff, near Warwick, as appears from the authority of Sir William Dugdale.

2. The bones thought to be those of the anchoress of Rosia, were but lately discovered in a cell at Royston, entire, fair, and undecayed, though they must have lain interred for several centuries, as is proved by Dr Stukeley.

3. But our own county-nay, almost this neighbourhood-supplies another instance; for in January 1747, were found by Mr Stovin, accompanied by a reverend gentleman, the bones in part of some recluse, in the cell at Lindholm, near Hatfield. They were believed to be those of William of Lindholm, a hermit, who had long made this cave his habitation.

4. In February 1744, part of Woburn Abbey being pulled down, a large portion of a corpse appeared, even with the flesh on, and which bore cutting with a knife;

though it is certain this had lain above two hundred years, and how much longer is doubtful; for this abbey was founded in 1145, and dissolved in 1538 or 1539.

'What would have been said, what believed, if this had been an accident to the bones in question?

"Further, my lord, it is not yet out of living memory, that a little distance from Knaresborough, in a field, part of the manor of the worthy and patriotic baronet who does that borough the honour to represent it in parliament, were found, in digging for gravel, not one human skeleton only, but five or six, deposited side by side, with each an urn placed on its head, as your lordship knows was usual in ancient interments.

'About the same time, and in another field almost close to this borough, was discovered, also in searching for gravel, another human skeleton; but the piety of the same worthy gentleman ordered both pits to be filled up again, commendably unwilling to disturb the dead.

'Is the invention of these bones forgotten, then, or industriously concealed, that the discovery of those in question may appear the more singular and extraordinary? whereas, in fact, there is nothing extraordinary in it. My lord, almost every place conceals such remains. In fields, in hills, in highway-sides, in commons, lie frequent and unsuspected bones; and our present allotment of rest for the departed is but of some centuries.

'Another particular seems not to claim a little of your lordship's notice, and that of the gentlemen of the jury; which is, that perhaps no example occurs of more than one skeleton being found in one cell; and in the cell in question was found but one; agreeable in this to the peculiarity of every other known cell in Britain. Not the invention of one skeleton, then, but of two, would have appeared suspicious and uncommon.

'But it seems another skeleton has been discovered by some labourer, which was full as confidently averred to be Clarke's as this. My lord, must some of the living, if it promotes some interest, be made answerable for all the bones that earth has concealed, or chance exposed? And

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