something aristocratic. The
"Mayoral Minutes" of Kensington is rather a handsome quarto volume.

An added touch of distinction is given these British volumes by the
presentation card, tipped in after the front cover. A really exquisite
little thing is this one: it bears, placed with great nicety, its coat of
arms above, delicately reduced in size; across the middle, in beautiful
sensitive type, it reads: "With the City Accountant's Compliments"; in
the lower left corner, in two lines, "Guildhall, Gloucester."

The municipal documents of Germany are very German. Verwaltungsbericht
is one of those extraordinary words which are so long that when you look
at one end of the word you cannot see the other end. These volumes
sometimes might possibly be mistaken, by a foreigner, for "gift books."
Often they are bound, in pronounced German taste, in several strong
colours in a striking combination. Buttressing the decorative German
letters, on cover and title page, appears some one of various
conventionalisations of the German eagle, made very black, and wearing a
crown and carrying a sceptre. In "Verwaltungsbericht des Magistrats der
Koniglichen Haupt- und Residenzstadt Hanover, 1906-7," the frontispiece,
the armorial bearings, "Wappen der Koniglichen" and so forth is a
powerfully coloured lithograph, a very ornate affair, of lions (of
egg-yolk yellow), armour, and leaves and castles. These German
publications are filled with excellent photographs of public places and
buildings, and extensive unfolding coloured maps and diagrams. A
gentleman with a taste for art viewed with much admiration a handsome
plate of "des Dresdener Wassenwerks." They contain, too, these volumes,
multitudes of pictures of distinguished citizens, often photogravures
from official paintings; these gentlemen sometimes appear decorated with
massive orders, or again decorated simply with very German expressions of
countenance. The "Chronik der Haupt- und Reisdenzstadt Stuttgart, 1902,"
somewhat suggests bound volumes of "Jugend," with its heavy pen and ink
head and tail pieces, of women marketing, of a bride and groom kneeling
at the altar, and one, an excellent little drawing of a horse mounting
with a heavily laden wagon a rise of ground, the driver beside him, and a
street lamp behind protruding from below (remember this is a municipal
document).

A quaint little duodecimo is the "Jaarbockie voor de Stad Delft," with
little headpieces pictorial