Australian
Institute to write a lecture on my impressions of England, different
from the article which had appeared in The Cornhill Magazine under that
title, but neither the committee nor myself thought of the possibility
of my delivering it. My good friend, the late Mr. John Howard Clark,
Editor of The Register, kindly offered to read it. I did not go to hear
it, but I was told that he had difficulty in reading my manuscript, and
that, though he was a beautiful reader, it was not very satisfactory.
So I mentally resolved that if I was again asked I should offer to read
my own MS. Five years afterwards I was asked for two literary lectures
by the same committee, and I chose as my subjects the works of
Elizabeth Browning and those of her husband, Robert Browning. Now, I
consider that the main thing for a lecturer is to be heard, and a
rising young lawyer (now our Chief Justice) kindly offered to take the
back seat, and promised to raise his hand if he could not hear. It was
not raised once, so I felt satisfied. I began by saying that I
undertook the work for two reasons--first, to make my audience more
familiar with the writings of two poets very dear to me; and second, to
make easier henceforward for any woman who felt she had something to
say to stand up and say it. I felt very nervous, and as if my knees
were giving way; but I did not show any nervousness. I read the
lecture, but most of the quotations I recited from memory. Not having
had any lessons in elocution, I trusted to my natural voice, and felt
that in this new role the less gesticulation I used the better. Whether
the advice of Demosthenes is rightly translated or not--first
requisite, action; second, action; third, action--I am sure that
English word does not express the requisite for women. I should rather
call it earnestness--a conviction that what you say is worth saying,
and worth saying to the audience before you. I had a lesson on the
danger of overaction from hearing a gentleman recite in public "The
dream of Eugene Aram," in which he went through all the movements of
killing and burying the murdered man. When a tale is crystallized into
a poem it does not require the action of a drama. However little action
I may use I never speak in public with gloves on. They interfere with
the natural eloquence of the hand. After these lectures I occasionally
was asked to give others on literary subjects.

At this time I began to study Latin with my nephew, a