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midst of the most faithful vigilant guards. In short, there is nothing either in nature or art which can protect us from its cruel and insatiable hands.
There are none so barbarous, but are sometimes overcome by the prayers and tears of such as themselves to implore mercy and compassion; and even those who have the least sense of humanity commonly spare the weakest sex and age. But unmerciful Death has no more respect to such as humble themselves then to those that resist. It regards not the tears of the infants sucking at the breast, but plucks them from the bosoms of their tender mothers, and dashes them in pieces before their eye. It mocks at the lamentations of the fair and lovely, and delights to trample upon their enchanting beauties. It stops its ears to the supplications of trembling old age, and takes a pride in casting to the ground those venerable oaks which have been so long rooted in the world.
In the day of battle, when Princes or Generals of an army are taken prisoners, they are treated in a different manner from common soldiers, but inexorable Death, who is wind to all distinctions, treads under foot, with the same haughtiness, the prince and the subject, the master and the servant; the nobleman and the vassal, the rich Dives and the begging Lazarus. It blows out with the same blast the most shining luminaries and the most obscure lamps. It has no more respect for the crowns of kings, the Pope's triple crown, and the Cardinal's hat than from the shepherd s crook or the slave's chains. Sooner or later it heaps them all together in the same dark and lothsome prison, and in the same mortar reduces them to dust.
There is no war so furious and cruel, but what admits of some days or at least some hours of truce,
