ABOUT ROOFS the largeness and conspicuousness of the protection against the ponderous snow and driving sleet." This passage explains why hospitality in town houses has never the easy, genial warmth of country friendships. Cottages and rural houses invite every one to think of home, to take in them a tenancy of thought; whereas houses in town, however comfortable and splendid, are like the manners of statesmen in office, cold and aloof, with all their courtesy. The English people, again, have a feeling inborn that confirms the views expressed by Ruskin, for they never stop in the streets to admire a tall house whose coverlid cannot be seen; nor do they ever praise any public building which, like the British Museum, brings into our cold and rainy climate the hidden roof and the porticoed architecture that belong to a land where the sun rules in a genial manner. When there is a good roof, plain for everybody to see, evident provision has been made for the many wet days; but when the roof is hidden from sight, an English house looks dismal and discouraging, like a person defying the rain or snow without an umbrella. CHAPTER VII ARCHERY IN THE CLEARED FOREST LANDS R OGER ASCHAM (1515-1568), reader to Queen Elizabeth, and the principal teacher of Lady Jane Grey, wrote the first good book on archery. He called it "Toxophilus, the Schole or Partitions of Shooting contayned in two bookes, pleausant for all Gentlemen and Yomen of England for theyr pastime to reade." Written in the year 1544, it issued from the press in 1571, "at London in Fleet Streete neare to St. Dunstones Church," Thomas Marshe being the printer. There are many who believe that Ascham was first in the field. But this was not quite his luck. "The Boke Named The Governour," by Sir Thomas Elyot, Knight, published in 1531, had recognised "that shotyng in a long bowe was the principall of all other exercise"; and it was reprinted in 1546, 1547, 1564, and 1580. But Ascham's "Toxophilus" comes easily first in merit as a thorough study of the most important national sport in all the range of English history. Henry VIII. gave the author a pension of £10 a year, and this honour was confirmed by Edward VI. Both kings took a keen personal delight in archery, |