And suddenly the sun no longer warmed him, and he noticed that it had sunk behind a tree in whose hundred-yard-long shadow he was standing. For a second he shivered, not only at the loss of tangible heat, but at the realization that the summer was nearly gone (for it was still early in the afternoon), and this was the last cricket match, and he had missed all the others, and he was growing old, and winter was coming on, and next year he might have no chance; but most of all he regretted the loss of the incredible goodness of this day, and for the first time in his life the thought phrased itself in his mind: "No sooner do we grasp the present than it becomes the past." The haste of it all oppressed him. Nothing stands still. "A ripping day, wasn't it?" said his host as they walked back. "Perfect," he replied, with a sigh. "But how soon over!" They stopped for a moment at the top of the hill to look at the sunset, and he sighed again as his thoughts flew to that print 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.