With regard to the modern languages mentioned above, it is to be hoped that the old Eton method of teaching has been discarded. In the past the time set apart for French was too often merely a farcical interlude, during which boys devoted all their energies to teasing the master! The old classical system would be preferable if anything of the sort survives, for, after all, even a slight knowledge of the classics is better than an imperfectly assimilated smattering of a modern tongue. In old days very thorough methods were adopted in connection with Latin and Greek. One luckless lad in Keate’s division construed _Exegi_, I have eaten; _monumentum_, a monument; _perennius_, harder; _aere_, than brass. “Oh, you have, have you?” said the Doctor; “then you’ll stay afterwards, and I’ll give you something to help digest it,” and he did. On the whole, educational authorities are still loth to exclude Latin and Greek. The Commission of fifty years ago, after hearing much evidence, were of this opinion. The Commissioners reported:-- We believe that for the instruction of boys, especially when collected in a large school, it is material that there should be some one principal branch of study, invested with a recognised and, if possible, a traditional importance, to which the principal weight should be assigned and the largest share of time and attention given. We believe that this is necessary in order to concentrate attention, to stimulate industry, to supply to the whole school a common ground of literary interest, and a common path of promotion.... We are of opinion that the classical languages and literature should continue to hold, as they do now, the principal place in public school education. There is certainly much to be said for Latin as an aid to the acquirement of “exact expression,” but Greek is another matter altogether. According to the writer’s own experience, the majority of boys never obtained any real grip upon that defunct tongue, besides which, for all but an infinitesimal number, in after life Greek, as Mr. Andrew Carnegie has somewhat bluntly put it, “is of no more use than Choctaw.” The old Eton system was largely composed of paradoxical omissions, and by an extraordinary fiction boys were supposed to be thoroughly acquainted with subjects such as modern geography and arithmetic, of which, in reality, they knew nothing at all. [SN: MATHEMATICS]