Cecil John Rhodes (1853-1902) was born, like so many eminent Englishmen, in the house of a clergyman. Into the forty-nine years of his life he compressed a very stirring chapter of British victory. There was something of the buccaneer in his character when he prompted the notorious Jameson Raid and eventually brought the British Government into conflict with the cunning and ambition of Kruger--Oom Paul, as he was styled. For the bitter and bloody Boer War the blame has always been laid upon the shoulders of Rhodes. Rhodes was an Oxford man and an omnivorous reader. He began by working in the diamond-mines at Kimberley as a common laborer; he ended by becoming manager of the Chartered Company, and amassing a vast fortune.--_The Literary Digest_, April, 1914.[3] [3] _Ibid._ III _Sense and Sensibility._ A Novel. By Jane Austen. London: Egerton. 1811. Though inferior to _Pride and Prejudice_, this work is about as well worth reading as any novel which, previous to its publication, had been written in the English language. Its interest depends, not on its descriptive and narrative power, but on character portrayal and humor. Though both lovable girls, the two heroines, Elinor and Marianne, are as imperfect and as different as sisters are apt to be in real life. Vulgar match-making Mrs. Jennings, as Austin Dobson calls her, like many a flesh-and-blood dowager, at first repels us by her foolish prattle and finally wins our respect by her kindness. Sir John Middleton, with his horror of being alone; Lady Middleton, with her horror of impropriety; Miss Steele, who can always be made happy by being teased about the Doctor; Lucy Steele, pretty, clever, not over-fastidious in her principles, and abominably weak in her grammar; Robert Ferrars, whose airs are justly punished by his marriage to Lucy; Mrs. Ferrars, who contrives to be uniformly unamiable; Mrs. John Dashwood, fit daughter to such a mother; and Mr. John Dashwood, fit husband to such a wife--together form a gallery of portraits of which any author might be proud.