Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/145

 and psalters; a sense of personal possession pervaded all classes. To the church the busy trader would wend his way after a day of stir and turmoil, there to listen to the chanting of vespers, or to tell his beads before the image of some favourite saint. Not only did the people keep their church for prayer and meditation, but, if necessary, they stored in it their grain and wool; here councillors met for consultation on local affairs; here, in the long, dim aisles, lay at times the sick and the dying. No line sundered matters of religion from the affairs of daily life: State and Church were blended into one; the people looked to the priests in matters secular as well as in matters spiritual. The education of the children was entirely in the hands of ecclesiastics, for they were the only scholars in the country; they taught the children a little Latin, the rudiments of reading and writing, grammar and deportment One sorrow of childhood was spared the children of the Middle Ages: they had no spelling to learn; phonetic spelling was general; the letters of one word are constantly varied, and we have the word "chancellor" spelt in five different ways in a single deed of Oxford University. Boys and girls were taught together for the most part, but the