for their Bonapartes.  But if bitterness and sadness predominate, they are carried on an ebbing tide towards pessimism and contemptuous weariness of life; their soft type, in so far as they have one, has the softness of powder, dry and crushed, rather than that of a living organism.  In children, this type, fortunately rare, has not the charm or joy of childhood, but shows a restless straining after some self-centred excellence, and a coldness of affection which indicates the isolation towards which it is carried in later life.  Lastly, there is the unquiet group of nervous or melancholic temperaments, their melancholy not weighed down by listless sadness as the inactive lymphatics, but more actively dissatisfied with things as they are—­untiringly but unhopefully at work—­hard on themselves, anxious-minded, assured that in spite of their efforts all will turn out for the worst, often scrupulous, capable of long-sustained efforts, often of heroic devotedness and superhuman endurance, for which their reward is not in this world, as the art of pleasing is singularly deficient in them.  Here are found the people who are “so good, but so trying,” ever in a fume and fuss, who, for sheer goodness, rouse in others the spirit of contradiction.  These characters are at their best in adversity, trouble stimulates them to their best efforts, whereas in easy circumstances and surrounded with affection they are apt to drop into querulous and exacting habits.  If they are endowed with more than ordinary energy it is in the direction of diplomacy, and not always frank.  On the whole this is the character whose features are least clearly defined, over which a certain mystery hangs, and strange experiences are not unfrequent It is difficult to deal with its elusive showings and vanishings, and this melting away and reappearing seems in some to become a habit and even a matter of choice, with a determination not to be known.

Taking these groups as a rough classification for observation of character, it is possible to get a fair idea of the raw material of a class, though it may be thankfully added that in the Church no material is really raw, with the grace of Baptism in the soul and later on the Sacrament of Penance, to clear its obscurities and explain it to itself and by degrees to transform its tendencies and with grace and guidance to give it a steady impulse towards the better things.  Confirmation and First Communion sometimes sensibly and even suddenly transfigure a character; but even apart from such choice instances the gradual work of the Sacraments brings Catholic children under a discipline in which the habit of self-examination, the constant necessity for effort, the truthful avowal of being in the wrong, the acceptance of penance as a due, the necessary submissions and self-renunciations of obedience to the Church, give a training of their own.  So a practicing Catholic child is educated unconsciously by a thousand influences, each of which,