The customs of chivalry had not ceased to shape the early training of an Italian gentleman, and it was therefore natural that Vittorino should incorporate in his school some of the characteristic features of knightly education. The staff of assistants included special teachers of dancing, riding, fencing, and swimming, and to these exercises were added wrestling, running and jumping, archery, ball games, hunting and fishing, and mock battles between two parties, or contests in which one side sought to storm the castle or surprise the camp of its opponents. The ample grounds about the villa which had been converted into a school building were well adapted for such sports, and all the pupils were required to share in them. Vittorino himself often joined them, it is said, and occasionally led them on excursions into the surrounding country, extending as far as Lago di Gardo, Venice, and the Alps. He insisted on moderation in food and drink, and did not allow weather or season to interfere too much with life in the open air. Vittorino had thus succeeded in combining physical with mental training and bringing them within the reach of every pupil; but outside of the schools for young noblemen, which continued to exist in various parts of Europe as late as the eighteenth century, he seems to have had few, if any, successors in this respect until Basedow opened the “Philanthropinum” at Dessau in 1774. During the more than three hundred years that intervene, however, much was written by educational reformers and others in commendation of bodily exercises and recognition of its right to a place in the curriculum; and some of these authors, theorists though they were, occupy an important position in the history of physical training, as links between the present and the past. Vittorino, indeed, had only applied in practice the pedagogical principles already outlined by another Italian humanist, _Pietro Paulo Vergerio_ (1349-1428), in a brief treatise on education sent to the young Ubertino di Carrara, whose tutor he had been at the court in Padua. This letter, which was afterwards printed and passed through many editions, refers repeatedly to ancient Greeks and Romans, as authorities or by way of illustration, and devotes two of its chapters to the subject of physical exercise. _Maffeo Vegio_ (1407-1458), who began life as a scholar and poet but later entered the service of the Church at Rome and finally joined the order of Augustinian monks, wrote one of the most notable pedagogical works of the fifteenth century, and in the chapters relating to physical training shows in a similar way the influence of his classical studies. To the same category belong _Enea Silvio Piccolomini_ (1405-1464), better known as Pope Pius II, who was at one time a secretary at the court of Emperor Frederick III, and in 1450 prepared a tractate on the subject of princely education; _Francesco Filelfo_ (1398-1481), who wrote to the