entry which descants in epigrammatic fashion on the comparative
morals of the women of France, Holland and England is unfit for
publication. Looking over the diary, it is instructive to observe
how little reference is made to music. One or two of the entries
are plainly memoranda of purchases to be made for friends. There
is one note about the National Debt of England, another about the
trial of Warren Hastings. London, we learn, has 4000 carts for
cleaning the streets, and consumes annually 800,000 cartloads of
coals. That scandalous book, the Memoirs of Mrs Billington,
which had just been published, forms the subject of a long entry.
"It is said that her [Mrs Billington's] character is very
faulty, but nevertheless she is a great genius, and all the women
hate her because she is so beautiful."

Prince of Wale's Punch

A note is made of the constituents of the Prince of Wales's
punch--"One bottle champagne, one bottle Burgundy, one bottle
rum, ten lemons, two oranges, pound and a half of sugar." A
process for preserving milk "for a long time" is also described.
We read that on the 5th of November (1791) "there was a fog so
thick that one might have spread it on bread. In order to write I
had to light a candle as early as eleven o'clock." Here is a
curious item--"In the month of June 1792 a chicken, 7s.; an
Indian [a kind of bittern found in North America] 9s.; a dozen
larks, 1 coron [? crown]. N.B.--If plucked, a duck, 5s."

Haydn liked a good story, and when he heard one made a note of it.
The diary contains two such stories. One is headed "Anectod," and
runs: "At a grand concert, as the director was about to begin the