With mutual question asked and answered, vein Of old-time boyish reminiscence shared Between them as together on they rode-- Their horses pricking each the other's speed-- The two soon overtook their retinues, Who, seeing their chiefs adjoined in comradeship, Themselves in comradeship dissolved their sense Of race and race to mix as men and men. So all day long together, side by side, Riding, or resting in the noontide shade, Sergius and Saul, a frank companionship, Immixed their minds in speech of many things. Young life, young health, glad sense of fair emprise, High-hearted hope of boundless futures theirs, Delicious weather and blithe season bland, Blue cloudless heaven forever overhead-- By the sole sun usurped his tabernacle Whence sovran virtue beaming into all-- Sweet voice of singing-bird, sweet smile of flower, Sweet breath exhaled from tender-fruited vine, Joy, a full feast, through every flooded sense-- And, heightening all, that billowy onward sway Of motion without effort on their steeds, Made, to those lord possessors of the world, Their talking like the coursing of their blood, Self-moved, or like the running of a brook That laughs and sparkles on its downward way, As ceasing never from its hope to drain The fountain, brimming ever, whence it flows. Of arms, of art, and of philosophy, They spoke, and letters; spoke, too, of the fame Of ancient Grecian masters of the mind, Who ruled, and rule, by charm of prose or verse. First, Homer, hoar with immemorial eld, Pouring his epics in that profluent stream Which, like his ocean, wandered round the world; Bold Pindar, with his lyric ecstasies, On throbbing wings of exultation borne Into the empyrean, whence his song Broken descends in showers of melody; Father of history, Herodotus, "Half poet, epic, or idyllic, he"-- So, Saul thereto assenting, Sergius said-- "With his Ionic strain mellifluous Of wonder-loving artless narrative"; Thucydides, the soul of energy; Æschylus, Titan; happy Sophocles; With soft Euripides unfortunate; Then Socrates, "Who wrote no books," said Saul, "Or wrote most living books in living men; Plato, the chiefest book of Socrates, Yet mind so large and so original That, in him reading what his teacher taught, One knows not whether Socrates it be, Or Socrates's pupil, that one reads"-- "Knows not, and, for delight, cares not to know, Full-sated with the feast of such discourse, So wealthy, wise, urbane, harmonious!"-- Stung to enthusiasm, thus Sergius, Continuing what from Saul ceased incomplete. "Our Tully," added he, "from Plato's well Deepest his draughts drank of philosophy, And, thence inspired, wrote such sweet dialogue, Latin half seemed delectable as Greek." "Yea, and a man of fine civility