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 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.