FullReads

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 pictorially representing the seasons and a curiously wood-cut astrologer introducing “den Almanak.” A rather square-toed kind of a little volume, neatly bound in grey boards, and very nicely printed, having altogether an effect of housewifely cleanliness, is the “Verslag van den Toestand der Gemeente Haarlem over het jaar 1894. Door Burgemeester en Wethouders Uitgebracht aan den Gemeenteraad; imprint Gedrukt bij Gebr Nobels, te Haarlem.”

The language of Great Britain’s municipal documents is lofty: “The Royal Burrough of Kensington, Minute of His Worship the Mayor (Sir H. Seymour King, K.C.I.E., M.P.) for the year ending November, 1901.” (Here is imprinted the design of a quartered shield containing a crown, a Papal hat, and two crosses, and, beneath, the motto: “Quid Nobis Ardui.”) “Printed” (continues the reading) “by order of the Council, 30th, October, 1901. Jas. Truscott and Son, Printer, Suffolk Lane, E.C.” And in the following there is something of the rumble of the history of England:

“Addresses

Presented from the

Court of Common Council

to the

King.

On his Majesty’s Accession to the Throne,
And on various other Occasions, and his Answers,
Resolutions of the Court,
Granting the Freedom of the City to several
Noble Personages; with their Answers,
Instructions at different Times to the
Representatives of the City in Parliament.
Petitions to Parliament for different Purposes,
Resolutions of the Court,
On the Memorial of the Livery, to request
the Lord Mayor to call a Common Hall;
For returning Thanks to Lord Chatham,
And his Answer;
For erecting a Statue in Guildhall,
to
William Beckford, Esq.; late Lord Mayor,
Agreed to between the 23d October, 1760, and the
13th. October, 1770
Printed by Henry Fenwick, Printer to the Honorable
City of London.”