anted. Haydn made an error in bar 12.]

[Figure: a musical score excerpt]

Curiously enough Berlioz was impressed exactly in the same way when he
heard the Charity Children in 1851. He was in London as a juror at the
Great Exhibition; and along with his friend, the late G. A. Osborne, he
donned a surplice and sang bass in the select choir. He was so moved by
the children's singing that he hid his face behind his music and wept.
"It was," he says, "the realization of one part of my dreams, and a
proof that the powerful effect of musical masses is still absolutely
unknown." [See Berlioz's Life and Letters, English edition, Vol. I., p.
281.]

London Acquaintances

Haydn made many interesting acquaintances during this London visit.
Besides those already mentioned, there was Bartolozzi, the famous
engraver, to whose wife he dedicated three clavier trios and a sonata
in E flat (Op. 78), which, so far unprinted in Germany, is given by
Sterndale Bennett in his Classical Practice. There was also John Hunter,
described by Haydn as "the greatest and most celebrated chyrurgus in
London," who vainly tried to persuade him to have a polypus removed from
his nose. It was Mrs Hunter who wrote the words for most of his English
canzonets, including the charming "My mother bids me bind my hair." And
then there was Mrs Billington, the famous singer, whom Michael Kelly
describes as "an angel of beauty and the Saint Cecilia of song." There
is no more familiar anecdote than that which connects Haydn with Sir
Joshua Reynolds's portrait of this notorious character. Carpani
is responsible for the tale. He says that Haydn one day found Mrs
Billington sitting to Reynolds, who was painting her as St Cecilia
listening to the angels. "It is like," said Haydn, "but there is a
strange mistake." "What is that?" asked Reynolds. "You have painted
her listening to the angels. You ought to have represented the angels
listening to her." It is a very pretty story, but it cannot possibly
be true. Reynolds's portrait of Mrs Billington was painted in 1789,
two years before Haydn's arrival, and was actually shown in the Academy
Exhibition of 1790, the last to which Sir Joshua contributed. [The
portrait, a whole length, was sold in 1798 for 325 pounds, 10s., and
again at Christie's, in 1845, for 505 guineas--to an American, as
usual.] Of course Haydn may have made the witty remark here attributed
to him, but it cannot have been at the time of the painting of th