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GIRLHOOD OF QUEEN ELIZABETH. 167 "If ten gentlemen," he remarks, "be asked why they forgot so soon in court that which they were learning so long in school, eight of them, or let me be blamed, will lay the fault on their ill handling by their schoolmasters." A school, he says, should be " a sanctuary against fear," and nothing should be learned unless the mind of the pupil grasps it and goes along with it. He enforces his doctrine by two illustrious examples,' Lady Grey and Queen Elizabeth. It is from Roger Ascham's " School- master " that we have those agreeable glimpses of Lady Jane Grey which have made her name so interesting to posterity. Ascham visited her at her father's seat when she was a girl of fourteen, and found her reading Plato, while all the rest of the family were out hunting in the park. He asked her why she did not join in the hunt. She answered with a smile : " I wist all their sport is but a shadow to that pleasure that I find in Plato. Alas, good folk ! they never felt what true pleasure meant." He asked her how she acquired this taste for learning. Her answer shows the barbarous manners of the period, and illustrates in the most striking manner Roger Ascham's doctrine. She told him that she had been blessed with severe parents and a gentle schoolmaster. When she was in presence either of father or mother, she ' was always in trouble or disgrace. " Whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand, or go ; eat, drink, be merry, or sad ; be sewing, playing, dancing, or doing anything else, I must do it, as it were, in such weight, measure, or number, and even so perfectly as God made the world, or else I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened, yea, presently, sometimes with pinches, nips, and bobs (or in other ways which I will not name for the honor I bear them), so without measure disordered, that I think myself in hell."