30 JANUARY 1904, Page 36

hoods. Mr. Sykes is anxious, it would seem, to show

us, not exactly the squalor, for the word would not be appropriate, but the meanness of the life of the wealthy. His hero is a young Peer, the son of an ennobled millionaire. He starts with a sufficiently honourable ideal. But he is mixed up with a very base set of people, an American adventuress being conspicuous among them. The sayings and doings of this set are the subject of which Mr. Sykes treats. It is a subject which might conceivably be made interesting ; but only by genius. Mr. Sykes has fair literary ability ; genius he has not ; and we must own that we have found Algernon Casterton as dreary a piece of reading as has ever come into our day's work.