The present Mayor of Birmingham—Alderman Jesse Collings —has made a
very sensible innovation on the traditional usages of the office which he holds. He has arranged, at his own private cost, to give a series of free concerts at the Town Hall ; to which he is inviting, through the Trade Societies, a large number of the working-men of the town, with their wives and daughters,—in the hope, as he says, of " offering to those who, from various reasons, are unable to obtain such enjoyment, an opportunity of hearing a selection of high-class music." The first of these concerts was given on Saturday last, to an audi- ence of 3,000 poor persons. Considering that what is called. " municipal hospitality " generally consists in giving to a few town councillors and social magnates costly and somewhat vulgar dinners, in what Thackeray used to call the " florid Gothic style," a mayor who selects for his guests 13,000 of his poorer fellow-townsmen, and offers to them an evening's enjoyment of a pure and elevating kind, deserves the credit, not only of doing a generous and considerate thing, but also of furnishing, by his novel experiment, a useful hint to the dispensers of civic, hospitality elsewhere.
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