The Lord Mayor on Thursday gave a dinner to the
Pre- fect of the Seine, to which he had invited the heads of the most conspicuous municipalities in the world, includ-
ing the Mayors, Syndics, or Municipal Presidents of Rome, Florence, Turin, Brussels, Amsterdam, Geneva, Lisbon, Quebec, Christiania, and many more foreign capitals, with the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Lord, Provosts of Edinburgh and Glasgow, and hosts of provincial dignitaries. The Times is quite frightened at the array, and abandons its life-long crusade against the City of London, and the scene was really one to strike the imagination with•&sense of the vitality existing in municipal organisations. Imagine a Syndic of Rome dining with a Lord Mayor of London, sod S. Peruzzi, whose ancestors were robbed by Edward III. of the savings of the rich Florentines, deposited with him and lent to the English King, dining placably as representative of Florence in the Guildhall 1 The Lord Mayor next time, however, should complete his set by asking the municipal head of Damascus, the oldest city probably in the world, and somebody from Pekin. The arrangements and dinner are said to have cost £18,000, the guests dined in their robes, and everything was very grand except the speeches, which were fifth- rate. The Burgomaster of Brussels can talk English effectively, but the Syndic of Rome's Italian was too much for the reporters, while the majority of the speakers had nothing to say. Municipal greatness is apt to be inarticulate, but the Lord Mayor, with Rome and Quebec present at dinner, had a subject which he missed.
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