hize, be feared, and kill with looks;
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life
Were brass impregnable; and humored thus,
Comes at the last, and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and--farewell, King!"

In the eighth we see a King (it is unmistakably Francis I.) dining under
a canopy, and served by a splendid retinue. He stretches out his hand to
receive a wine-cup; for he does not see that Death is filling it.

A Cardinal appears in the ninth, selling an indulgence for a heavy
bribe; and we all rejoice to see that Death has laid hands upon his
hat,--the symbol of his rank,--and is about to tear it from his head.

In the tenth, an Empress, passing through her palace-yard, attended by
her ladies, is led by the favorite on whom she leans, and who she does
not see is Death, into an open grave.

Death, in the next, has assumed the guise of a Court Fool, and has
seized a Queen at the very gate of her palace. She recognizes him, and
struggles, shrieking, to free herself from his grasp; but in vain. With
a grin of fierce delight, he lifts up his hour-glass before her, and,
in spite of her resistance and that of a gentleman who attends her, is
about to bear her off. Every line of this composition is instinct with
life.

In the twelfth, Death carries off a Bishop from his flock.

In the thirteenth, an Elector of the Empire, surrounded by his retinue,
is approached by a poor woman, who begs his aid in behalf of herself and
her child; he repulses her scornfully; for he does not see that Death,
the avenger of the oppressed poor, and who is here crowned with
oak-leaves, has laid his gripe upon him. Holbein has put such an
expression of power into the arm and of wrath into the face of this
skeleton, that we expect to see his victim haled off into the air before
our very eyes.

The Abbot and the Abbess are the subjects of the next two cuts. In the
former, Death has assumed the mitre and the crosier of his victim, and
drags him off with such an expression of fun and burlesque pomp as we
sometimes see in the face of a mischievous boy who mocks his betters.
In the companion group his look is that of a demon; and with his head
fantastically dressed, he drags the Abbess off by the scapulary which
hangs from her neck.

A Nobleman and a Canon are his prey in the sixteenth and seventeenth
groups. We lack space to describe any but the most remarkable with
p