166 GIRLHOOD OF QUEEN ELIZABETH. the most learned of women ; perhaps the most learned woman of her day. Among his writings is a treatise on the art of teaching, in which he explains his method ; a work which, I suppose, has had more effect in softening the modes of training the young than any other of the kind in the English language. The reader will be amused at its quaint, old-fashioned title-page, which I will here copy with its ancient spelling : "The Scholemaster, or plaine and perlite way of teachynge children to understand, write and speak the Latin tongue, but specially purposed for the private brynging up of youth in Jentlemen and Noblemen's houses, and commodious also for all such as have forgot the Latin tongue, and would by themselves without a Scholemaster in short tyme, and with small paines recover a sufficient habilitie to understand write and speak Latin." Before the appearance of this wise and good little book, the modes of education were almost universally barbarous, and had been so from ancient times. In the buried city of Pompeii, the common sign of a school was a picture or carving which represented the master whipping a boy upon his naked back. Luther speaks of his school as a purgatory, and mentions that in the course of one morn- ing he was whipped fifteen times. In Shakespeare there are thirteen allusions to going to school, all of which are in harmony with the well-known passage which represents "the school-boy creeping like a snail unwillingly to school." Children had to learn most things by rote, with little explanation, or none, and for every offence and every infirmity there was only one remedy, bodily torment. Roger Ascham rose against this barbarous system, and denounced it with quaint but eloquent indignation. Over and over again, he says that a kind and gentle manner, accompanied by just praise for good conduct, would pro- duce better results than keeping the pupils in perpetual fear.
