same question was agitated at the beginning of the last century. To be sure, said F., it always will be a question, and it is fit it should be. Geddes was still more incomprehensible; for if I understood him, the century begins with the year 99. I asked him to explain: he said he could only do it by a diagram; but added, that after Christ was born, the year 1 was not completed till he was one year old; to which I answered, this I believed nobody would dispute. As I found they either did not understand themselves, or at least were unintelligible to me, I dropped the question. _10th._—Left my card for C.—Mr B. called. Has adopted the cant which from Germany has spread to England, of affirming Mozart to be a greater man than Haydn. In Germany, his theatrical pieces have given Mozart his great popularity: he was undoubtedly a man of uncommon genius, but not a Haydn. His life indeed was too short. Stoddart left his translation of Don Carlos. He has executed his task reputably: the fourth and fifth acts of the play are greatly confused. The first interview of Philip II. and the Marquis of Posa, is a masterly scene. The whole is unequal; in some parts, feeble; in others, tedious: and yet a performance of which none but a man of genius could be capable. It reminds the reader of Hamlet and Othello, and of various passages in Shakespeare. _11th._—Read Boswell. Handel returned from the binders. Wrote Act I of the opera, but had some notes. Heard at Debrett’s that when Pitt went to the levee, after his illness and duel, the king shook him by the hand, a thing unprecedented, and violating etiquette.