vows, and in whose service
I enlisted. Was there ever a time when she needed more the loyalty
of us all? While she is fashioning that Empire which shall be without
limit or end and raise us to the lordship of the earth, she runs the
risks of attack from impalpable enemies who shall defile her highways
and debauch her sons. Arrogance, luxury, violent ambition, false
desires, are more to be dreaded than a Parthian victory. The subtle
wickedness of the Orient may conquer us when the spears of Britain
are of no avail. Antony and Gallus are not the only Romans from whom
Egypt has sucked life and honour.

"Like you, again, I am no soldier. Your friends and my friends go
lustily to Ionia and Lydia and Gaul and Spain, co-workers, as you
say, in a beloved government. Is not Rome, then, all the more left
to our defence? You pleased me once by saying that you 'knew every
line' of my _Georgics_. You know, then, that I have believed that
the sickened minds of to-day could be healed, if men would but return
to the intimacies of the soil and farm. Our great master, Lucretius,
preached salvation through knowledge of the physical world. I have
ventured to say that it could be found through the kindly help of
the country gods. But now I am beginning to see deeper. In Rome
herself lie the seeds of a new birth. When men see her as she is in
her ancient greatness and her immortal future, will not greed and
lust depart from their hearts? I think it must have been at dawn,
when the sea was first reddening under the early sun, that AEneas
sailed up to the mouth of the Tiber, and found at last the heart of
that Hesperia whose shores had seemed ever to recede as he drew near
them. Now that our sky is blazing with the midday sun, shall we betray
and make void those early hopes? Shall the sistrum of Isis drown our
prayers to the gods of our country, native-born, who guard the Tiber
and our Roman Palatine?

"I am seeking to write a poem which shall make men reverence their
past and build for their future. Will you not help me to work for
Rome's need? You have sincerity, passion, talent. You have commended
a beautiful woman to me. Will you not let me commend my Mistress to
you? Farewell."

The letter slipped from the boy's fingers to the floor. The wonderful
voice of Virgil, which made men forget his slight frame and awkward
manners, seemed to echo in his ears. In that voice he had heard
stately hexameters read until, shutting his eyes, he coul