Like Dominici, Vittorino loved to see the children run about, and laugh, and leap, and play. He found two of them, during recreation hour one day, confabbing in a corner about their lessons. Do you think he was pleased? Not a bit of it. Out he routed them, and made them take part in the other children’s games. For, long before the English Duke, he had found out for himself that many a battle yet to be fought was being won already on those meadows by the Mincio, where his pupils were playing merrily. One of the outstanding features in Vittorino’s system was the importance he attached to games—and all sorts of physical exercises. He held as a fundamental principle that “the human spirit cannot exercise its faculties fully, if the physical organs which it must use are defective.” He insisted on outdoor exercise, whatever the weather. He had his pupils taught riding, and swimming, and wrestling, and fencing. He organised hunting and fishing expeditions for them; and, remembering that many of his pupils were to be soldiers, he liked to teach them the art of warfare, by occupying mimic trenches, and pitching mimic camps, and taking mimic towns—according to the most approved methods. These rougher plays were not for the girls, though they, in general, shared the lessons of the boys. For them there were dancing lessons, where every movement of their body was trained to an exquisite grace. They had riding lessons, too, and hunted and played “palla,” or tennis. No game was tolerated for them which would tend to make them ungraceful—as so many of the games our girls play to-day really seem to do. Plenty of fresh air and exercise, plenty of good, simple food, to which they brought the sauce of a healthy hunger, sound and dreamless sleep, soon made the youngsters of the “Casa Giocosa” a healthy, happy band, whom it was a delight to see at their lessons. He had the supreme gift of the good teacher, our Vittorino, that of knowing how to interest his pupils in their work. The maxim of Quintilian “do not allow the boy to conceive an aversion for the studies which he cannot yet love,” was adopted by him, and, until the young minds were ripe enough to love learning for its own sake, it was the master’s care to surround it with attractions. So we find him reviving the Quintilianian device of teaching the youngsters to read by means of painted cards and wooden blocks. As we have seen already, our Irish ancestors had a similar plan. In Whitley Stokes’ “Lives of the Irish Saints from the Book of Lismore,” there is a charming story of Saint Columbkille, as a child, learning his letters from a cake, on which they had been stamped. In Vittorino’s school there was no place for the rod, which we have seen play such an important part in the mediæval school-system. He liked to appeal to the children through their sense of honour and dignity. The greatest punishment for such children was to make them feel ashamed.