classic writings. [Sidenote: Rivalry and adoption of the new learning by the universities.] =The Relation of the Court Schools to the Universities.=--The court school at Mantua had thus a most potent influence upon the educational practice of the times, and trained a large number of distinguished ecclesiastics, statesmen, scholars, and rulers. It doubtless was broadly typical of the court schools and of the humanistic education of Italy in general. These court schools, while taking pupils very early, often retained them until they were twenty-one, and covered as much, if not more, ground than the arts course of the university. They were, in a way, competitors of the older institutions. A student might, for the sake of a degree, go from a court school to a university, but, as a rule, if what he wished were a general course, he would be satisfied with the greater prestige that came from being a pupil of one of the distinguished humanists that the court schools were generally able to retain at their head. In fact, the want of hospitality, if not actual hostility, of universities to the new learning, often stimulated the growth of court schools. In many instances where the university was especially conservative, a court school was set up by its side as a professed rival. Gradually, however, the humanistic training crept into all the universities of Italy, and the classical literature of the Greeks and Romans largely took the place of the former grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic. Before the close of the fifteenth century, Florence, Padua, Pavia, Milan, Ferrara, Rome, and other cities had admitted the humanities to their universities, and the other university seats were not long in following their example. [Sidenote: Humanism eventually became formalized and largely a drill in grammar.] [Sidenote: ‘Ciceronianism.’]