The pageantry and shows exhibited in great towns and cities on occasions of joy and solemnity were equally deficient in taste and genius. At London, where they were most frequently required, that is to say, at the reception of foreign monarchs, at the processions of our own through the city of London to Westminster previous to their coronation, or at their return from abroad, and on various other occasions; besides such as occurred at stated times, as the lord-mayor's show, the setting of the midsummer watch, and the like, a considerable number of different artificers were kept, at the city's expense, to furnish the machinery for the pageants, and to decorate them. Stow tells us that, in his memory, great part of Leaden Hall was appropriated to the purpose of painting and depositing the pageants for the use of the city. The want of elegance and propriety, so glaringly evident in these temporary exhibitions, was supplied, or attempted to be supplied, by a tawdry resemblance of splendour. The fronts of the houses in the streets through which the processions passed were covered with rich adornments of tapestry, arras, and cloth of gold; the chief magistrates and most opulent citizens usually appeared on horseback in sumptuous habits and joined the cavalcade; while the ringing of bells, the sound of music from various quarters, and the shouts of the populace, nearly stunned the ears of the spectators. At certain distances, in places appointed for the purpose, the pageants were erected, which were temporary buildings representing castles, palaces, gardens, rocks, or forests, as the occasion required, where nymphs, fawns, satyrs, gods, goddesses, angels, and devils, appeared in company with giants, savages, dragons, saints, knights, buffoons, and dwarfs, surrounded by minstrels and choristers; the heathen mythology, the legends of chivalry, and Christian divinity, were ridiculously jumbled together, without meaning; and the exhibition usually concluded with dull pedantic harangues, exceedingly tedious, and replete with the grossest adulation. The giants especially were favourite performers in the pageants; they also figured away with great applause in the pages of romance; and, together with dragons and necromancers, were created by the authors for the sole purpose of displaying the prowess of their heroes, whose business it was to destroy them. Some faint traces of the processional parts of these exhibitions were retained at London in the lord mayor's show about twenty or thirty years ago;[55] but the pageants and orations have been long discontinued, and the show itself is so much contracted, that it is in reality altogether unworthy of such an appellation. XXIII.--SETTING OUT OF PAGEANTS.