[Illustration]
Since it first lifted its tall head, "like a bully," as POPE rudely
put it, the London Monument has been much looked at. If it is not to
be superseded amid the sights of London, it is time it began to look
out for itself. A rival has been creeping up year after year in the
bulky volume known as _Burdett's Official Intelligence_. The volume
just out bears the record Fourteenth Year--a mere child in point of
age, but a prodigy of colossal size and almost, supernatural
knowledge. It is perhaps quite an accident that the pages run up to
1899. But the fact is fresh testimony to the _fin de siècle_ character
of the work. Persons about to marry would, my Baronite says, find it a
nice start in the way of furnishing a library. In emergency, it would
serve as a dining-table, a footstool, a four-post bedstead, or (if the
pages were cut out and distributed as tracts in the City) the binding
might be rebuilt to form a spare bedroom. Just the book to take down
with you to Brighton, or up the river on some of those sunny days we
hope are coming. Crammed full of information from cover to cover. What
_Burdett's Intelligence_ does not know about financial affairs and
Stock Exchange business would make a very small book.