of the
"Melancholia" which had hung on the stairs in his early home.

"Notice the sunset," some visitor had once said to him. "Some day you
will know why Duerer put that in."

And now he knew.

That evening he heard the Winchester boys making plans for the winter
sports at Pontresina in the Christmas vac.

The Scholar and the Pirate

In an old bookshop which I visit, never without making a discovery or
two--not infrequently, as in the present case, assisted in my good
fortune by the bookseller himself--I lately came upon an edition of
Long's _Marcus Aurelius_ with an admirable prefatory note that is, I
believe, peculiar to this issue--that of 1869. And since the eyes of the
present generation have never been turned towards America so often and
so seriously as latterly, when our Trans-Atlantic cousins have become
our allies, blood once more of our blood, the passage may be reprinted
with peculiar propriety. Apart, however, from its American interest, the
document is valuable for its dignity and independence, and it had the
effect of sending me to that rock of refuge, _The Dictionary of National
Biography_, to inquire further as to its author. There I found that
George Long, whose translation of the Imperial Stoic is a classic, was
born in 1800; educated at Macclesfield Grammar School and Trinity
College, Cambridge; in 1821 was bracketed Craven scholar with Macaulay
and Professor Malden, but gained a fellowship over both of them; and in
1824 went to Charlotteville, Virginia, as professor of ancient
languages. Returning in 1828 to profess Greek at University College,
London, he was thenceforward, throughout his long life, concerned with
the teaching and popularizing of the classics, finding time, however,
also to be called to the Bar, to lecture on jurisprudence and civil law,
and to help to found the Royal Geographical Society. His _Marcus
Aurelius_ is his best-known work, but his edition of Cicero's Orations,
his discourse on Roman Law, and his Epictetus also stand alone. After
many years' teaching at Brighton College, Long retired to Chichester,
where he died in 1879.

Late in life he brought out anonymously a book of essays, entitled _An
Old Man's Thoughts about Many Things_, in which I have been dipping. I
do not say it would bear reprinting now, but anyone seeing it on a
friend's shelf should borrow it, or in a bookshop should buy it,
because such kindly good sense, such simple directness and candour a