in point abounding with interest and instruction, more easily accessible than what can be gathered from modern characters, in whom less clearly defined temperaments and more complex conditions of life have made it harder to distinguish the characteristic features of the mind.  To mention only one or two—­St. Francis of Sales and Blessed Thomas More were great assentors, so were Pico de Mirandola and the great Popes of the Renaissance, an example of a great Nonconformist is Savonarola.

The old division of temperaments into phlegmatic or lymphatic, sanguine, choleric, and nervous or melancholy, is a fairly good foundation for preliminary observation, especially as each of the four subdivides itself easily into two types—­the hard and soft—­reforms itself easily into some cross-divisions, and refuses to be blended into others.  Thus a very fine type of character is seen when the characteristics of the sanguine and choleric are blended the qualities of one correcting the faults of the other, and a very poor one if a yielding lymphatic temperament has also a strain of melancholy to increase its tendency towards inaction.  It is often easy to discern in a group of children the leading characteristics of these temperaments, the phlegmatic or lymphatic, hard or soft, not easily stirred, one stubborn and the other yielding, both somewhat immobile, generally straightforward and reliable, law abiding, accessible to reason, not exposed to great dangers nor likely to reach unusual heights.  Next the sanguine, hard or soft, as hope or enjoyment have the upper hand in them; this is the richest group in attractive power.  If hope is the stronger factor there is a fund of energy which, allied with the power of charm and persuasion, with trustfulness in good, and optimistic outlook on the world, wins its way and succeeds in its undertakings, making its appeal to the will rather than to the mind.  On the softer side of this type are found the disappointing people who ought to do well, and always fail, for whom the joie de vivre carries everything before it, who are always good natured, always obliging, always sweet-tempered, who cannot say no, especially to themselves, whose energy is exhausted in a very short burst of effort, though ever ready to direct itself into some new channel for as brief a trial.  The characters which remain “characters of great promise” to the end of their days, great promise doomed to be always unfulfilled.  Of all characters, these are perhaps the most disappointing; they have so much in their favour, and the one thing wanting, steadiness of purpose, renders useless their most beautiful gifts.  These two groups seem to be the most common among the Teutons and Celts of Northern Europe with fair colouring and tall build; perhaps the other two types are correspondingly more numerous among the Latin races.  They are choleric, ambitious, or self-isolated, as the cast of their mind is eager or scornful and generally capable of dissimulation; the world is not large enough