MR CAXTON (completing his sentence,)--"Not only as regards mildness of temper and other household qualifications, but as regards the very _person_ of the object of his choice. For you evidently remembered, Pisistratus, the reply of Bias, when asked his opinion on marriage: [Greek: Êtoi kalên hexeis, ê aischran; kai ei kalên, hexeis koinên; ei dê aischran, hexeis poinên.]" Pisistratus tries to look as if he had the opinion of Bias by heart, and nods acquiescingly. MR CAXTON.--"That is, my dears, 'the woman you would marry is either handsome or ugly: if handsome, she is koiné, viz. you don't have her to yourself; if ugly, she is poiné--that is, a fury.' But, as it is observed in Aulus Gellius, (whence I borrow this citation,) there is a wide interval between handsome and ugly. And thus Ennius, in his tragedy of _Menalippus_, uses an admirable expression to designate women of the proper degree of matrimonial comeliness, such as a philosopher would select. He calls this degree _stata forma_--a rational, mediocre sort of beauty, which is not liable to be either koiné or poiné. And Favorinus, who was a remarkably sensible man, and came from Provence--the male inhabitants of which district have always valued themselves on their knowledge of love and ladies--calls this said _stata forma_ the beauty of wives--the uxorial beauty. Ennius says, that women of a _stata forma_ are almost always safe and modest. Now Jemima, you observe, is described as possessing this _stata forma_; and it is the nicety of your observation in this respect, which I like the most in the whole of your description of a philosopher's matrimonial courtship, Pisistratus, (excepting only the stroke of the spectacles,) for it shows that you had properly considered the opinion of Bias, and mastered all the counter logic suggested in Book v. chapter xi., of Aulus Gellius." "For all that," said Blanche, half-archly, half-demurely, with a smile in the eye, and a pout of the lip, "I don't remember that Pisistratus, in the days when he wished to be most complimentary, ever assured me that I had a _stata forma_--a rational, mediocre sort of beauty." "And I think," observed my uncle, "that when he comes to his real heroine, whoever that may be, he will not trouble his head much about either Bias or Aulus Gellius." CHAPTER II.