Beneath the mask of perpetual, careless good-humor, lurked the keenest eye, a subtle, restless, widely combining brain, and an iron will. Native sagacity had been tempered into consummate elasticity by the fiery atmosphere in which feebler natures had been dissolved. His wit was as flashing and as quickly unsheathed as his sword. Desperate, apparently reckless temerity on the battle-field was deliberately indulged in, that the world might be brought to recognize a hero and chieftain in a king. The do-nothings of the Merovingian line had been succeeded by the Pepins; to the effete Carlovingians had come a Capet; to the impotent Valois should come a worthier descendant of St. Louis. This was shrewd Gascon calculation, aided by constitutional fearlessness. When dispatch-writing, invisible Philips, star-gazing Rudolphs, and petticoated Henrys sat upon the thrones of Europe, it was wholesome to show the world that there was a king left who could move about in the bustle and business of the age, and could charge as well as most soldiers at the head of his cavalry; that there was one more sovereign fit to reign over men, besides the glorious virgin who governed England. Thus courageous, crafty, far-seeing, consistent, untiring, imperturbable, he was born to command, and had a right to reign. He had need of the throne, and the throne had still more need of him. WALLENSTEIN, DUKE OF FRIEDLAND. BY FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER. [Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von Wallenstein, a distinguished Austrian general, the most noted opponent of Gustavus Adolphus in the Thirty Years’ War, born 1583, assassinated 1634. Wallenstein had already achieved the most brilliant rank among the Imperialist generals, except Tilly, when the defeat of the latter made the ambitious soldier, whose great wealth and unscrupulous daring had excited the jealousy of the Emperor Ferdinand, again a necessity to the Catholic cause. Wallenstein, who had raised and subsisted an immense army at his own expense at a time of pressing imperial need, had afterward been retired from command. When called again to the help of the imperial cause, Wallenstein dictated his own terms, which practically left Ferdinand a mere puppet in his hands. Though Gustavus Adolphus was victor at the battle of Lützen, it was at the cost of his own life, a result welcomed by the Catholic league as a great victory. Wallenstein reorganized his army, and was again ordered by the emperor to lay down his baton on the just suspicion that he was negotiating with the Swedes disloyally. His official removal was made known to his principal generals, and Wallenstein, deserted by a large portion of his troops, was assassinated by a conspiracy of his minor officers, who had become satisfied that it would be impracticable to secure his person alive, or to prevent his immediate junction with the advancing Swedes.]