"Who's Who" takes me in the same way. Ordinarily I have no particular thirst for it. I should not dream of carrying it about in my waistcoat pocket for perusal on the Underground Railway. But once I have allowed myself to open it, I am a slave to it for hours. This has just happened to me with the new volume, upon which I have wasted a valuable afternoon. I began by looking up a man's address; I then read the compressed life-story of the gentleman next above him (a major-general), wondering, somewhat idly, whether they read of each other's performances and whether either of them resented the possession by the other of a similar, and unusual, surname. Then I was in the thick of it. Even so. But an afternoon spent in reading, straight along, the work of reference we have in mind could not be called wasted. Indeed, quite the contrary; such an afternoon could be nothing less than one of those spiritual experiences which suddenly give a measure of growth to the soul. The work which we came upon, in the circumstances indicated, was "The Dictionary of National Biography"; and the volumes which, by chance, we took down were Volumes II. and III. of the Second Supplement of the Dictionary. They contain, these volumes, memoirs of 1,135 noteworthy English persons dying between January 22, 1901, and December 31, 1911. The alphabet extends from John Faed, artist, to George, Lord Young, Scottish Judge. The contributors number 357; the list of these names is a roll of the most distinguished, in all departments, in the English Nation of our day. This publication, we should say, is the most interesting to English-speaking people, as in all probability it is the most important, generally, issued within at any rate the year of its publication. And though we cannot rid ourselves of a melancholy feeling in contemplating this survey of the great stream of brilliant life ended, we feel there is more good reading for the money in these pages than in any other book one is likely to come across at random. The toll these ten years have taken! The chronicle is here of some born to greatness, like Queen Victoria; of those, like Cecil Rhodes, who have achieved it. And the stories are told of some whom the world's fame found but within the last hour, then dead: John Millington Synge (contributed by John Masefield), and Francis Thompson (by Everard Meynell). The proportion of biographies of men of letters predominates in considerable measure. Science follows in the list, then art. The least but one, sport, is the law. Among the names of women, forty-six in number, are Florence Nightingale, Kate Greenaway, Charlotte Mary Yonge, and Mrs. Craigie (John Oliver Hobbes).