8 APRIL 1876, Page 22

The Youth of the Period. By J. F. Shaw - Kennedy.

(Samuel Tinsley.)—What can be the good of writing the biography of an extra- vagant and profligate young fool, a creature without a single good quality, and without brains enough to get into the Army ? If this is indeed a true picture of the "youth of the period "—our own opinion is. that it is an odious caricature—let the foul creature be forgotten, illacrymabilis ignotusque. A more purposeless book than this cannot be imagined. Mr. Kennedy photographs, so to speak, some people that he seems to have seen. As for character, there is nothing of the kind. And when he might have made something of his story when he has got his hero, if the word may be so applied, to a position where the moral of his life might be brought out—utterly perplexed, it would seem, to know whet to do with him, he drops him from the roof of a house, and so gets rid of him. How much better to have done it on the first page.