creature so cruelly akin to himself that you might be his brother-to be consolingly assured that though the tenor of the book be slow, and the author unquestionably a dull man, there are now and then little gleams of intelligence in him, and little signs of would-be smartness. Then come the guesses, whether you may not be Mr Spurgeon, Martin Somebody, or perhaps a female writer.

It is twenty-one years, compassionate reader, since I underwent all this, and the suffering is as fresh as if it was yesterday. I remember the very table where they cut me up-I can recall the chair on which I sat to be lacerated-I can bring to mind the drivelling idiot that had got bits of my unhappy production, as he thought, by heart, and declaimed them, with interpolated balderdash of his own, till my reason actually wandered under the infliction.

I declare it, and declare it advisedly, that though few men are ever killed by severe criticism, numbers drop into an early grave, or, worse again, into drivelling incapacity, from the effects of a mistaken admiration. The people who go about advertising your deformities, praising the hump on your back, your squint, your hare-lip, these are your real destroyers.

The last of my anonymous miseries was the seeing my volume-the work over which I had toiled and

laboured, pondered over by day, dreamed of at night, revolved in such shapes that it became part of my very nature, and its characters dearer to me than kith or kin-seeing this held aloft by a book auctioneer as he said, "What shall we say for this, gentlemen? I have not read it, but I am told that it once had a considerable vogue; it is handsomely bound in calf, with gilt edges. Will any gentleman say two shillings-half the cost of the binding?-Thank you, sir! At sixpence it is going-gone!"

Oh, Fame! what a terrible ignis fatuus you are; and, dear me! what cruel "croppers" some of us do meet in pursuit of you!

WHAT'S WHAT IN '65.

I READ in the advertisements-I have never seen it-of a little volume with the title, 'Who's Who,' purporting to be a sort of vade mecum to all that large class of people who like to hear about other people with whom they do not live.

The taste for this sort of knowledge must unquestionably be on the increase, since a large space in many of our leading newspapers is devoted to a species of gossip in which personality is the point; and here we have a periodical-for this little volume appears annually—especially instituted to supply this want.

The taste is, besides, a very national one. There is something in the humoristic temperament of our people that leads them to attach great interest to whatever is identified with those who are known to them by fame and reputation; and thus we see what

value is attached to the most commonplace words employed by a sovereign-how we go about repeating to each other some very ordinary expressions of a prince or a princess-and to what ecstasies we are carried by the jokes of a Minister, whose wit, it is fair to hope, is not on a par with his wisdom.

I am very willing to recognise something besides

snobbery" in this ready appreciation of notorieties; and I do hope that, in part at least, it has its source in the racy geniality of our people.

Hence is it that, while we have bulky volumes of Peerages, Baronetages, Landed Gentry, and so forth, the whole continent of Europe rests satisfied with a little insignificant tome called the Almanach de Gotha.' How suggestive is this! to what a world of speculation might it lead one! Nor is it without its significance that a greater prestige should attach itself to nobility in a land where the nobles are comparatively novi homines, than to those countries whose great names come down from the most remote ages. Possibly we are proud of our peerage as the City man was of his port-wine-because he had made it himself.

'Who's Who,' however, deals with other than the titled classes. From its pages we learn who are all those distinguished people who veil their celebrity

behind pseudonymes, or, more secretly still, preserve and thus are we instructed who

the anonymous;

is Paterfamilias of the Times,' who is Historicus, who wrote the Roving Englishman,' who edits the 'Owl.'

It may be that, in the obscure and out-of-theworld life I lead, I place a great value on these things like the prisoner who made a companion of a spider, it is just possible that my solitude may lead me to attach undue importance to such crumbs of information as every Dives of knowledge lets drop from his table. I own, however, in all humility, I do like them, and, if I could, I should like to have photographs of great celebrities, such as Mr Toole the Toast-master, Mr Spurgeon, and that accomplished gentleman-I forget his name who takes excursionists over Europe, and enables them to do Italy-maccaroni and the galleries included-for fifteen pound five shillings.

How gratifying to be able to look upon the counterpart of those great men, whose fame has become a national possession!

Turning, however, from this gratifying prospect, let me suggest another volume, which might be made a companion to this valuable little book, and whose title might be 'What's What.' Colloquially indeed it is in our power, though possibly not always