Serious as his purpose was, his manners were genial, and even courtly; he turned easily from an invective against Strafford to a chat with Lady Carlisle; and the grace and gayety of his social tone, even when the care and weight of public affairs were bringing him to the grave, gave rise to a hundred silly scandals among the prurient royalists. It was this striking combination of genial versatility with a massive force in his nature which marked him out from the first moment of power as a born ruler of men. He proved himself at once the subtlest of diplomatists and the grandest of demagogues. He was equally at home in tracking the subtle intricacies of royalist intrigues, or in kindling popular passion with words of fire. Though past middle life when his work really began--for he was born in 1584, four years before the coming of the Armada--he displayed from the first meeting of the Long Parliament the qualities of a great administrator, an immense faculty for labor, a genius for organization, patience, tact, a power of inspiring confidence in all whom he touched, calmness and moderation under good fortune or ill, an immovable courage, an iron will. No English ruler has ever shown greater nobleness of natural temper or a wider capacity for government than the Somersetshire squire, whom his enemies, made clear-sighted by their hate, greeted truly enough as “King Pym.” HENRY IV, KING OF FRANCE. BY JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. [First French king of the Bourbon family, born king of Navarre 1553, assassinated 1610. Educated a Huguenot, he, as representing this religious party, was married to Marguerite de Valois, the sister of Charles IX, to signalize the pretended reconciliation of religious differences, a few days before the massacre of St. Bartholomew. For four years he was detained at the French court and compelled to abjure his faith, till he succeeded in escaping and putting himself at the head of the Protestant forces. After a life of remarkable vicissitudes, Henry of Navarre became _de jure_ king of France as the next of surviving blood after Henry III, but was not crowned till 1794, at which time he, for political reasons, again and finally abjured Protestantism. Paris, and shortly afterward the whole of France, then submitted to his rule. During his reign of sixteen years Henry showed the highest qualities of the great ruler, and his genius promised to make him as powerful a potentate as Charles V had been, when he fell by the knife of the assassin Ravaillac.] At his very name a figure seems to leap forth from the mist of three centuries, instinct with ruddy, vigorous life. Such was the intense vitality of the Bearnese prince, that even now he seems more thoroughly alive and recognizable than half the actual personages who are fretting their hour upon the stage.