Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/175

Rh Wednesday before Christmas, Easter, and Whitsunday, and lasted twelve days. There was no rush to the seaside for parents, children, and masters during the brief vacation. Scholars were required to attend daily from eight to nine and two to three, to repeat such lessons as the schoolmaster deemed profitable for them. It is hard to realise the mass of useless information which was forced on the unfortunate boy—a barbarous Latin taught in a still more barbarous manner, freely interrupted with pitiless floggings to subdue the natural animal spirits of youth. "They went to the grammar school little children," says Ascham, "they came from thence great lubbers, always learning and little profiting: learning without book little or nothing," for "their whole knowledge of learning without a book was tied only to their tongue and lips, and never ascended up to the brain and head." At the University things were not more luxurious. "There be divers at Cambridge which rise daily about four or five of the clock in the morning, and from five till six of the clock use common prayer with an exhortation of God's word in a common chapel; and from six until ten of the clock use ever either private study or common lectures. At ten of the clock they go to