ound of a
vielle or rote,--an old musical stringed instrument,--which he has hung
about his neck. His glee, as he leads forth his victims into the valley
where his shadow lies, is perceptible in every line of his angular
anatomy; his very toes curl up like those of a baby in its merriment.

In the fourth, Adam has begun to till the ground. The pioneer of his
race, he is uprooting a huge tree, all unconscious that another figure
is laboring at his side. It is not Eve, who sits in the background with
her first-born at her breast and her distaff by her side,--but Death,
who, with a huge lever in his bony gripe, goes at his work with a fierce
energy which puts the efforts of his muscular companion to shame. The
people of Holbein's day not only saw in this subject the beginning of
that toil which is the lot of humankind, but, as they looked upon the
common ancestors of all men, laboring for the means of life, they asked,
in the words of an old distich,--

"When Adam delved and Eve span,
Where was then the gentleman?"

The fifth composition seems to represent a general rejoicing over the
Triumph of Death. It shows a churchyard and porch filled with skeletons,
who blow trumpets of all sorts and sizes; one beats frantically upon a
pair of kettle-drums, and another, wearing a woman's nightcap, with a
broad frill border, plays the hurdy-gurdy.

In the sixth, a Pope, the highest earthly potentate, is in the act of
crowning an Emperor, who kneels to kiss his toe. But the successor of
St. Peter does not see, as he sits upon his throne, giving authority and
sanction to the ruler of an empire, that a skeleton leans from behind
that throne, and grins in his face, and that another in a cardinal's hat
mingles with the throng before him.

The seventh is one of the finest of the series. An Emperor is enthroned,
with his courtiers round him. He is threatening one with his sword for
some act of injustice from which a poor peasant who kneels before him
has suffered. But, unseen by all, a skeleton bestrides the shoulders of
the monarch and lays his hand upon his very crown. There can be no doubt
that Shakspeare had this subject in his mind when he wrote that fine
passage in "King Richard the Second,"--

"Within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court; and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp;
Allowing him a breath, a little scene
To monarc