Rough Notes of a Lesson.


I hope to start a new lesson for some of you, and I have gathered you all
here to-day, whether you will be able to come to it or not, because, in
thinking over what I wished to say about this one lesson, I found I was
led into describing what I should like all lessons to do for you. My new
lesson will be a talk on various things in which you are, or ought to be,
interested. I have tried this plan before, and have sometimes been laughed
at for having such miscellaneous lessons, but I found their effect very
good. I had a spare half-hour in the week, which I gave to this Talking
Lesson.

Once I took Dante, and after a sketch of his life and of Florence, we went
through the "Inferno;" I read the famous parts in full and told the story
of the rest, and now many of those children who listened feel, when they
come on anything about Dante, as if they had met an old friend.

Then I happened to go to Yorkshire and saw several of its lovely abbeys:
I came back with a craze for architecture, so I and the girls did that
together. Neither they, nor I, imagine that we understand architecture, or
are authorities on it; but though we only took the barest outline, it made
us all use our eyes and enjoy old buildings. I often get letters from
those girls, saying that they have since enjoyed their travels so much
more, because they now notice the architecture. You know the story of
"Eyes and No Eyes"--how two boys went out for a walk--one saw nothing to
notice, and the other found his way lined with interesting things. I am
sure, architecturally, your way is lined with beauty in Oxford, which
deserves both outward and "inward eyes."