Considered in the light of recent shows there was nothing to find fault with in the procession which accompanied Lord Mayor Pound from the Guildhall to the Law Courts and back. It contained more than the usual number of bands and bauners there were the usual fire-engines and oat, footman and foresters, and them wer cal cars representi ig four great empires of the ages—the Ezyptian, Greek, Roman, and British. If these were suggestive of the procession which announces to the village the arrival of the itinerant circus, they were not more so then usual. But the revolt against the whole thing has been stronger this year than ever before. The show makes a public holiday. Thousands of children and still more' thousands of grown-up people theong the course; but i brings the trade of L still for the day, and it certainly adds no dignity to the Mayoral office. One caustic critic has pronounced it to be a "humiliating burlesque of civic dignity which is "'symbolical of nothing except the wooden-headed immutability of Gog and Magog that immutability is, however, a static force which has to be reckoned with, and believe it will be the The Birthday Honours, Officially the King's birthday is kept somewhere in the middle of the away from Sandringham, Majesty entertained a big house-party and foisted his tenants, there were few signs of popular celebration, beyond the ringing of church bells and at night the display of illuminations, chiefly by Roy"l warrant-holders. But there was the usual list of birthday pours. It is not particularly long list. It includes no peerages, only one appointment to the Privy Council, and five baronetcies. The new P. C. is the Chief Government Whip, Sir A. Aclan Hood; the baronets include three M. P's who have distinguished themselves more by their services to the party in power than by any remarkable brilliancy as debaters, Mr. Edward Boyle, K.C., who is a dock director as well as a successful barrister, Naim of Kirkcaldy. Of the fourteen new home Knights, the most interesting are Mr. Beacheroft, who has risen to high honour on the London County Council in spite of the fact that he has always belonged to the party in Opposition; Dr. Shirley Murphy, the County Council's medical officer; Mr. Pink, of jam fame; Dr. Swan, of the electric light; and Mr. Aston Webb, our foremost architect, who convinced, and no doubt {has designed the great Queen Victoria memorial now rising in front of Buckingham Palace. The Astronomer Royal haa at last got" K.C.B.; and there is the usual shower of titles snd orders for diplomatic and Imperial services; one of ial interest to old residents in Shi hai being the C.B. conferred upon R.S. Gundry.
The "Standard."
In Fleet Street the sensation of the week has been the purchase of the "Standard" by Mr. C. Arthur Pearson, who is believed to have given £670,000 for it, and who wishes it to be understood that he has made the purchase entirely "on wa," a8 a business transaction" The Tariff Reform League protests that it has had nothing to do with it; and Mr, Pearson's assurance that no Amer ican newspaper owners are with him in the purchase must of course be accepted. At the same time the suggestion that Mr. Pearson provided all the money out of his own pocket is taken with a grain of salt. A very short time ago the price named would have been cheap for the "Standard but a study of ite adver ment columns during the last few months will show that it has been going steadily down, a fact due partly perhaps to its adherence to Free Trade after the party had abandoned it, but more to an indisposition in other directions to move with the times. Mr. Pearson announces that no chang to be made in the style and tone of the paper; but of course will become an advocate of Protection, or rather "Tariff Reform," and so the only Unionist opponent of Mr. Chamberlain's policy among London journals is wiped out, Already Mr. Byron Curtis, the editor, has loft, and several other changes in the personnel of the paper have been made. It is not without regret that newspaper roaders will see the spirit of the "hustler" invade and transform the foremost type of sober, solid, substantial conservative journalism.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.