24 FEBRUARY 1906, Page 25

A Sicilian Marriage. By Douglas Sladen. (F. V. White and

Co. 6e.)—There is a pleasant atmosphere of sunshine about Mr. Sladen's novel, A Sicilian Marriage. It is a compliment to the book to call it a novel, as the story is decidedly thin, and in order to make a volume of the size for which it is possible to ask six shillings, the book has to be padded out with a good many Sicilian stories which have nothing to do with the plot. The only very credible nersonage is the Sicilian lady, Donna Felicita, whose peculiar charm and beauty Mr. Sladen has con- trived to convey through the cold medium of pen and ink. The story Koper is not interesting, and the descriptions of the antiquities of Sicily would be really much more readable without the personages who move, rather stiffly, among the temples and .museums.