in holes and corners

Who died there in those months, in holes and corners and dark places, the magistrates may have known, no others.

In the day, they lurk in holes and corners, but no sooner does night approach, or the clouds threaten rain, than they issue forth by legions, crawl over the floor or furniture, dash in your face, or commence their work of devastation upon your property, leaving their nauseous odours behind them upon whatever they may touch.

Every Priest differs from every other Priest, and all differ from the truth; the Deity does not operate by stealth, he does not work clandestinely in holes and corners, as the miracle-mongers attest, but generally, openly, in the face of day, before all the world, in his works: he does not skulk in mosques, in churches, or in wildernesses, but is equally every where; he knows no more of the cross, the crescent, or the crosier, than he does of a tobacco-pipe, a mile-post, or a broom-stick.

Thus a mark was put upon me, keeping me always in holes and corners unless I would be known, and making most men, who love me by nature, growing in time to weary of my face.

It will be obvious that I had no intention of aiming at specimens in the higher department of monumental art, which have been so ably executed by Gough, Stothard, Neale, and others, but to content myself with those humbler efforts of skill which lay neglected and sometimes buried in holes and corners in many a rural church in remote districts.