I could imagine a novel with which I could sympathise deeply, based upon the theme of England's regeneration by means of the right type of Tory squire, but it would be a novel with a more credible hero and conceived in a less petty spirit of party bias than Mr. H. N. DICKINSON has given us in _The Business of a Gentleman_ (HEINEMANN). For, in the first place, _Sir Robert Wilton_, who figured of course in _Keddy_ and _Sir Guy and Lady Rannard_--he has, in fact, by this time married _Marion_, late _Sir Guy's_ widow--is far too jumpy and nervy a person to fit my ideal of a paternal landlord, and what is, after all, more important, I feel convinced that his tenants and stable-lads would have thought the same. Secondly, I refuse to believe that a spinster, however soured, however much devoted to the cause of Labour and misguided crusades for social purity, would have behaved as _Miss Baker_ does in this book; and deliberately attempted to father a false scandal on _Sir Robert_ merely because she hated his type. And if the author replies that he knows of such an instance I maintain that it was just one of those things which the art of selection should have prompted him to leave out. I have, of course, no fault to find with Mr. DICKINSON'S style, which as usual is curiously simple yet at the same time attractive, nor with his powers of character-sketching. His schoolboy of seventeen, _Eddie Durwold_, is in this book particularly good. It is the things that these people do that bothers me. And if I might venture to rename _The Business of a Gentleman_ the title I should choose is "The Escapade of an Egoist." * * * * *