164 GIRLHOOD OF QUEEN ELIZABETH. The manners of the age were rude, and she was closely watched by hostile spies. Her brother Edward, however, remained her steadfast friend, and she herself acquired an extraordinary tact and caution in avoiding the perils which beset her. When she was seventeen and the king thirteen, he made her a present of a country house at Hatfield, a day's ride north of London, now the seat of Lord Salisbury, a member of the last Beaconsfield Cabinet. Here she maintained a liberal establishment, and had a considerable retinue of servants and retainers. In one of these retainers she was fortunate above all the princesses of her time. I mean Roger Ascham, her tutor, and afterwards her secretary. In truth the school children of all the world might very properly unite in building a monument to Roger Ascham. He was the great apostle of the gentle and kind system of teaching. He was among the first to discover and to teach that there are other ways of training and instructing the young than by the lash. He was also the first to come out distinctly against the cramming and forcing system. Over and over again, he advises schoolmasters not to teach their pupils too much and too long. " If," said he in one of his letters, " if you pour much drink at once into a goblet, the most part will dash out and run over." He was born in England about 1515, and showed such excellent traits in his childhood that a gentleman of rank and wealth took him into his family, educated him with his own children, and sent him to the University of Cam- bridge. After graduating, he became a tutor at Cam- bridge, where he was the room-mate for several years of William Grindall, who was appointed tutor to Queen Elizabeth. Ascham himself had given lessons in pen- manship to the children of Henry VIII. He wrote a
