Two of the most famous teachers in these court schools were Vittorino da Feltre, who conducted a famous school at Mantua from 1423 to 1446, and Guarino da Verona, who conducted another almost equally famous school at Ferrara from 1429 to 1460. Taking boys at nine or ten and retaining them until twenty or twenty-one, their schools were much like the best private boarding-schools of England and America to-day. Drawing to them a selected class of students; emphasizing physical activities, manners, and morals; employing good teaching processes; and providing the best instruction the world had up to that time known--the influence of these court schools was indeed large. Many of the most distinguished leaders in Church and State and some of the best scholars of the time were trained in them. By better methods they covered, in shorter time, as much or more than was provided in the Arts course of the universities, and so became rivals of them. The ultimate result was that, with the evolution of a series of secondary schools which prepared for admission to the universities, the gradual "humanizing" of the universities, and the introduction of printed textbooks, the Arts courses in the universities were advanced to a much higher plane. We have here one of the first of a number of subsequent steps by means of which new knowledge, organized into teaching shape, has been passed on down to lower schools to teach, while the universities have stepped forward into new and higher fields of endeavor.