The mother is preparing for two little children the simplest
and poorest of meals, at a fire made of a few small sticks. She finds
consolation in the very pranks that hinder her humble task. Death
enters,--there is no door to keep him out,--and, seizing the hand of the
younger child, who turns and stretches out the other imploringly to his
mother, carries him off, remorseless and exulting, leaving her frantic
with grief. We may look with comparative indifference, and sometimes
even with sympathy, upon his other feats,--but who is there that does
not hate that grinning skeleton?--And yet, perhaps, he exults that he
has saved one soul, yet pure, from misery and crime.
For vigor of movement the group of Death and the Soldier is preeminent.
The field is covered with the wounded and the slain, in the midst
of which the soldier encounters his last enemy. The man is armed in
panoply, and wields a huge two-handed sword with a vigor unabated
by former struggles. Death has caught a shield from the arm of some
previous victim; but his only offensive weapon is a huge thigh-bone,
which we plainly see will bear down all before it.
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