CANON LYTTELTON'S OPPORTUNITY.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—In the Spectator of April 8th the following passages occur in an article on "Canon Lyttelton's Opportunity" "He [Dr. Warre at Eton] arranged for extra hours and special lectures devoted to the teaching of modern history ; but he still, it has been suggested by some of his critics, did not regard the history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as more important than the Punic Wars and the
Syracusan Expedition But if the possession of that ability and that knowledge [classical] is to exclude the possi- bility of his [a boy of sixteen or seventeen] also knowing the elementary facts of the Franco-Prussian or the American Civil War, or for that matter, the Napoleonic campaigns, then there is an immense deal to be said against such a system of teaching." In a long Minute to the Minister of the Interior, Napoleon, writing in 1807, makes the same complaint in the following words :—" Touts notre jeunesse trouve plus de facilite pour apprendre lea guerres pnniques que pour connaitre la guerre d'Amerique, qui a en lieu en 1783; elle s'instruit plus facilement des evenements des siecles passees que de ceux qui se scat &miles depuis le jour de sanaissance."
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