One needs to be something of an artist as well as of a poet to
appreciate London at her true worth, and Mendelssohn possessed both
qualities in no small degree; hence it is only natural that the
artistic and poetical aspects of our city should have appealed most
strongly to his sensitive nature. A few days later he writes: 'I think
the town and the streets are quite beautiful. Again I was struck with
awe when yesterday I drove in an open carriage to the City along a
different road and everywhere found the same flow of life ...
everywhere noise and smoke, everywhere the end of the streets lost in
fog. Every few moments I passed a church, or a market-place, or a
green square, or a theatre, or caught a glimpse of the Thames....
Last, not least, to see the masts from the West India Docks
stretching their heads over the housetops, and to see a harbour as big
as the Hamburg one treated like a mere pond, with sluices, and the
ships arranged not singly, but in rows, like regiments--to see all
that makes one's heart rejoice at the greatness of the world.'

The magnificence of a ball at Devonshire House reminds him of the
'Arabian Nights.' The Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel were
present, and he describes the beauty of the girls dancing, the lights,
the music, the flowers, etc. 'To move among these beautiful pictures
and lovely living forms, and to wander about in all that flow of life
and universal excitement, perfectly quiet and unknown, and unnoticed
and unseen, to notice and to see--it was one of the most charming
nights I remember.' Again, of a fete held at the Marquis of
Lansdowne's, he says: 'That such magnificence could really exist in
our time I had not believed. These are not parties--they are festivals
and celebrations.'

In the mind of Mendelssohn, therefore, London struck a sympathetic
chord, and the pleasure which he felt on entering the city was
heightened by the warmth of the welcome which he received at the hands
of the musical public. His first appearance was at the Argyll Rooms,
in Regent Street, at a concert of the Philharmonic Society on May 25,
when his 'Symphony in C minor' was performed. He gives a full
description of the rehearsal and performance in his letter to Fanny:

'When I entered the Argyll Rooms for the rehearsal of my Symphony, and
found the whole orchestra assembled, and about two hundred listeners,
chiefly ladies, strangers to me, and when, first, Mozart's "Symphony
in E flat major"