=The Aim and Institutions of Humanistic Education.=--It can now be seen how far the ideals of humanism had departed from those of the mediæval period. The ‘otherworldly’ aim, the monastic isolation, and the scholastic discussions had given way to the interests of this life, personal and social development, and a study of the classics. In the North the movement took on rather a different color from what it did in the peninsula that gave it birth. While Northern humanism was narrower in not concerning itself so much with self-culture, personal expression, and the various opportunities of life, it had a wider vision through interesting itself in society as a whole and in endeavoring to advance morality and religion. It was democratic and social in its trend, where Italian humanism was more aristocratic and individual. [Sidenote: Organization,] [Sidenote: content,] [Sidenote: methods,] [Sidenote: and effect.] In Italy the chief educational institutions resulting from the humanistic movement were the schools that arose at the brilliant courts of the city tyrants. These institutions were sometimes connected with the universities, and gradually the universities themselves were forced to admit the new learning to the curriculum. In the North a number of new institutions--Hieronymian schools, princes’ schools, gymnasiums, and grammar schools--were developed from humanism, and the existing institutions soon showed the influence of the movement, but all of them stressed moral and religious studies, as well as classical. Everywhere the curriculum of the humanistic foundations consisted mostly in the mastery of Latin and Greek, but in the North the renewal of Greek meant also a study of the New and Old Testaments and the Church Fathers. Where the Italian Renaissance re-created the liberal education of Plato and Aristotle, Cicero and Quintilian, the movement in its Northern spread found in the classical revival a means of moral and religious training. But just as humanism in Italy by the beginning of the sixteenth century had degenerated into mere Ciceronianism, so the humanistic education in the North, after about a century of development, began to grow narrow, hard, and fixed. By the middle of the sixteenth century the spirit of criticism, investigation, and intellectual activity had begun to abate, and by the opening of the seventeenth humanism had been completely formalized. In the study of the classics all emphasis was placed upon grammar, linguistics, and style; form was preferred to content; and methods became _memoriter_ and imitative. Humanism had largely performed its mission, and a new awakening was needed to revivify education and society in general. SUPPLEMENTARY READING