Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/238

 pp. 164 seq.) and the article on pleasure motors to the eleventh edition of the ’Encyclopædia Britannica.' A paper read by Rolls at the Automobile Club of Great Britain and Ireland was privately printed in 1904. An article, 'My Voyage in the World's Greatest Airship,' was also privately reprinted from the ’London Magazine' (May 1908). Rolls was an accomplished amateur musician and actor, and a good football player.

 ROOKWOOD, first. [See (1826–1902), politician.]

ROOPER, THOMAS GODOLPHIN (1847–1903), writer on education, born at Abbots Ripton, Huntingdonshire, on 26 Dec. 1847, was son of William Henry Rooper, rector of Abbots Ripton, by his third wife, Frances Catherine, younger daughter of John Heathcote of Conington Castle, Huntingdonshire. Rooper's father was a liberal high churchman. In 1862 Rooper was sent to Harrow into the boarding-house of Dr. H. M. Butler, recently appointed headmaster. In his essay 'Lyonesse' Rooper vividly describes his school days at Harrow (1862-1866), where he began his lifelong study of botany, being one of the founders of the school scientific society. In October 1866 he went to Balliol College, Oxford, taking a second class both in classical moderations in 1868 and in the final classical schools in 1870. To Benjamin Jowett [q. v. Suppl. I], T. H. Green [q. v.], and his college friend, Bernard Bosanquet, his chief intellectual debt was due. He felt that Green's teaching laid the foundation of the beliefs in which he lived and worked. As an undergraduate Rooper intended to take orders, but in 1872 conscientious difficulties deterred him, though he remained till death a communicant lay member of the Church of England. From 1871 to 1877 he was private tutor to Herbrand Russell (afterwards eleventh duke of Bedford), gaining experience in teaching, studying German education, and acquiring a knowledge of history, literature, and science. After teaching for a few months Dr. Butler's young children at Harrow, he was appointed in Nov. 1877 inspector of schools under the Education Department, and spent the rest of his life in the public service, successively in Northumberland, in the Bradford district, and in the Southampton district, including the Isle of Wight.

His influence upon the teachers, the inspectorate, public opinion, and the policy of the board of education grew steadily from year to year. The specific service which he rendered to English elementary education lay mainly (1) in his efforts for the improvement of the teaching of geography, (2) in his encouragement of manual training, (3) in his influence upon methods of teaching in infant schools, (4) in the reforms which he secured in the professional and general education of younger teachers, and (5) in the closer adaptation of the course of study in rural schools to the conditions of country life, especially by the practical encouragement of school gardens. To improve the teaching of geography he wrote two papers, organised a geographical exhibition at fcadford in 1887, and in 1897 founded a Geographical Society at Southampton. Manual training he regarded as a necessary part of general education. He prepared himself for the advocacy of this educational reform by studying Dr. Goetze's work in Leipzig, and by attending Slōjd classes at Naas. His ideas on the subject were set forth in four important papers. He made a special study of the subject of drawing in infant schools, and of reforms in the methods of teaching children in the lower classes of the elementary schools. Both in the West Riding and in Southampton and the Isle of Wight he initiated classes for ex-pupil teachers, which met an urgent local need, and were subsequently taken over by the local education authorities. In the movement for the improvement of the curriculum of rural schools, Rooper played an unobtrusive but highly influential part. He was unsparing in his attendance at meetings held to advance the cause of rural education, and by the establishment of a school garden at Boscombe provided a model for imitation in other parts of England. His experiments in this field had influence upon the improvement of rural education in Canada. In all these activities Rooper was almost lavish in the financial aid which he privately gave to educational experiments at their critical stage. And in every case he mastered the practical technique of the improvements which he advocated, not only by visits to foreign countries, but by strenuous private study and by investigation in different 