In the Lord Mayor’s Show on the 9th of November, 1827, there was a
remarkable variation from the customary route. Instead of the new chief
magistrate and corporation embarking at Blackfriars, as of late years
has been usual, the procession took a direction eastward, passed through
the Poultry, Cornhill, Leadenhall-street, Billiter-lane, Mincing-lane,
and from thence by Tower-street to the Tower Stairs, where they
embarked. This deviation is presumed to have been in compliment to the
Tower ward, in which the lord mayor presides as alderman. The ancient
lord mayors of London were accustomed to “ride and go” on horseback,
attended in like manner by the aldermen, and others of the corporation,
to the bottom of Queen-street, and there embark on board the barges for
Westminster. The present is the first instance of the lord mayor’s show
by water having proceeded from a more distant spot down the river.
In addition to the “men in armour,” and the length of the route by land,
in the lord mayor’s show of this year, there was “the far more
attractive novelty of two colossal figures representing the well-known
statues, Gog and Magog, (as they are called,) of Guildhall. They were
extremely well contrived, and appeared to call forth more admiration and
applause, than fell to the share of any of the other personages who
formed part of the procession. Whatever some fastidious critics may say
as to the taste of reviving in the present day some of the
long-neglected civic pageants, we think the appearance of these figures
augurs well for the future conduct of the new lord mayor: some of his
brother magistrates would, we make no doubt, be well content if in the
whole course, or at the close, of their official career, they could come
in for a little of the plaudits which were yesterday bestowed on the two
representatives of Gog and Magog.” (_The Times_, Nov. 10.) From the
report of a spectator, it appears that the giants were constructed of
wicker-work, gaily apparelled in the costume of their prototypes, and
similarly armed: each walked along by means of a man withinside, who
ever and anon turned the faces towards the thrones of company in the
houses; and, as the figures were fourteen feet high, their features were
on a level with the first-floor windows throughout the whole of their
progress.
In a work, which contains much information respecting the “London
Triumphs” of the lord mayors, and the “pageants” of those processions in
the olden time, there is a chapter devoted to a History of the Carvings
called the “Giants in Guildhall.” As the book is my own, and seems to be
little known “within the walls,” I presume to render the account in a
compressed form, as follows--