Though it may be found in men of very different characters and grades of intellect, tact has its natural affinities. Seeking beyond all things to avoid unnecessary friction, and therefore with a strong leaning towards compromise, it does not generally or naturally go with intense convictions, with strong enthusiasms, with an ardently impulsive or emotional temperament. Nor is it commonly found among men of deep and concentrated genius, intensely absorbed in some special subject. Such men are often among the most unobservant of the social sides of life, and very bad judges of character, though there will frequently be found among them an almost childlike unworldliness and simplicity of nature, and an essential moderation of temperament which, combined with their superiority of intellect, gives them a charm peculiarly their own. Tact, however, has a natural affinity to a calm, equable, and good-natured temper. It allies itself with a quick sense of opportunity, proportion, and degree; with the power of distinguishing readily and truly between the essential and the unimportant; with that soundness of judgment which not only guides men among the varied events of life, and in their estimate of those about them, but also enables them to take a true measure of their own capacities, of the tasks that are most fitted for them, of the objects of ambition that are and are not within their reach. Though in its higher degrees it is essentially a natural gift, and is sometimes conspicuous in perfectly uneducated men, it may be largely cultivated and improved; and in this respect the education of good society is especially valuable. Such an education, whatever else it may do, at least removes many jarring notes from the rhythm of life. It tends to correct faults of manner, demeanour, or pronunciation which tell against men to a degree altogether disproportioned to their real importance, and on which, it is hardly too much to say, the casual judgments of the world are mainly formed; and it also fosters moral qualities which are essentially of the nature of tact. We can hardly have a better picture of a really tactful man than in some sentences taken from the admirable pages in which Cardinal Newman has painted the character of the perfect gentleman.