_Mr. Forester._ She should have a clear perception of the beauty of truth. Every species of falsehood, even in sportiveness, should be abhorrent to her. The simplicity of her thoughts should shine through the ingenuousness of her words. Her testimony should convey as irresistible conviction as the voice of the personified nature of things. And this ingenuousness should comprise, in its fullest extent, that perfect conformity of feelings and opinions which ought to be the most common, but is unfortunately the most rare, of the qualities of the female mind. _Mr. Fax._ You say nothing of beauty. _Mr. Forester._ As to what is usually called beauty, mere symmetry of form and features, it would be an object with me in purchasing a statue, but none whatever in choosing a wife. Let her countenance be the mirror of such qualities as I have described, and she cannot be otherwise than beautiful. I think with the Athenians, that beauty and goodness are inseparable. I need not remind you of the perpetual καλος κἀγαθος. _Mr. Fax._ You have said nothing of the principal, and, indeed, almost the only usual consideration in marriage—fortune. _Mr. Forester._ I am rich enough myself to dispense with such considerations. Even were I not so, I doubt if worldly wisdom would ever influence me to bend my knee with the multitude at the shrine of the omnipotence of money. Nothing is more uncertain, more transient, more perishable, than riches. How many prudent marriages of interest and convenience were broken to atoms by the French revolution! Do you think there was one couple, among all those calculating characters, that acted in those trying times like Louvet and his Lodoiska?[30] But without looking to periods of public convulsion, in no state of society is any individual secure against the changes of fortune. What becomes of those ill-assorted unions, which have no basis but money, when, as is very often the case, the money departs, and the persons remain? The qualities of the heart and of the mind are alone out of the power of accident; and by these, and these only, shall I be guided in the choice of the companion of my life. _Mr. Fax._ Are there no other indispensable qualities that you have omitted in your enumeration? _Mr. Forester._ None, I think, but such as are implied in those I have mentioned, and must necessarily be co-existent with them; an endearing sensibility, an agreeable cheerfulness, and that serenity of temper which is truly the balm of being, and the absence of which, in the intercourse of domestic life, obliterates all the radiance of beauty, all the splendour of talent, and all the dignity of virtue. _Mr. Fax._ I presume, then, you seriously purpose to marry, when you can find such a woman as this you have described? _Mr. Forester._ Seriously I do. _Mr. Fax._ And not till then? _Mr. Forester._ Certainly not. _Mr. Fax._ Then your present heir presumptive has nothing to fear for his reversion.