To this is added an ornamental tail-piece called Death's Arms. It shows
a skull in a battered shield, which has for a crest a regal helmet
surmounted by an hour-glass and two bony arms grasping a stone. The
supporters to the shield are a gentleman and lady richly dressed,--said
to represent Holbein and his wife.

It is not known, positively, when Holbein drew these designs upon the
blocks (for of course he did not engrave them); and it has even been
disputed by one or two eminent antiquarian critics, that he designed
them at all. But there does not appear to be a single valid reason for
thus diminishing his fame. He probably was engaged on them between
1531, the date of his first return to Bâle, and 1538, when they were
published,--the year in which he refused the solicitation of his
townsmen to return to the home of his childhood and the bosom of his
family.

Holbein continued to live in London until the year 1554, when that city
suffered a visitation of the plague, similar to that which was the
occasion of the painting of the Great Dance of Death at Bâle. Holbein
was struck by the disease; and Death, knowing gratitude as little as
remorse, triumphed over him who had blazoned his triumphs. Upon the
painter's fame, however, and that of his great work, Death could not lay
his hand; but so long as the grim tyrant shall claim his victims, so
long will he perpetuate the memory of Hans Holbein.

Though he was a royal favorite, it is not known where he died; and the
place where lie the ashes of him who, on a king's word, was greater than
seven earls, is equally unknown; there is not a line or a stone to mark
it. So soon after his death as in the reign of Charles I., (within
one hundred years,) a nobleman--noble by nature as well as by