Visits were also paid to Vauxhall Gardens, where "the music is
fairly good" and "coffee and milk cost nothing." "The place and
its diversions," adds Haydn, "have no equal in the world."

At St Paul's

But the most interesting event of this time to Haydn was the
meeting of the Charity Children in St Paul's Cathedral, when
something like 4000 juveniles took part. "I was more touched," he
says in his diary, "by this innocent and reverent music than by
any I ever heard in my life!" And then he notes the following
chant by John Jones: [Jones was organist of St Paul's Cathedral at
this time. His chant, which was really in the key of D, has since
been supplanted. 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