f humanity, and had dealt in it themselves.
_They_ had known joy as I had known it, and their sorrow had been as my
sorrows. _They_ had loved as I had loved, and sinned as I had sinned,
and suffered as I had suffered.

I wept for the first time since my entrance into Mizora, the bitter
tears of actual experience, and endeavored to convey to the Preceptress
some idea of the painful emotion that possessed me.

"I have noticed," she said, "in your own person and the descriptions you
have given of your native country, a close resemblance to the people and
history of our nation in ages far remote. These portraits are very old.
The majority of them were painted many thousands of years ago. It is
only by our perfect knowledge of color that we are enabled to preserve
them. Some have been copied by expert artists upon a material
manufactured by us for that purpose. It is a transparent adamant that
possesses no refractive power, consequently the picture has all the
advantage of a painting on canvas, with the addition of perpetuity. They
can never fade nor decay."

"I am astonished at the existence of this gallery," I exclaimed. "I have
observed a preference for sliding panels instead of doors, and that they
were often decorated with paintings of rare excellence, but I had never
suspected the existence of this gallery behind one of them."

"Any student," said the Preceptress, "who desires to become conversant
with our earliest history, can use this gallery. It is not a secret, for
nothing in Mizora is concealed; but we do not parade its existence, nor
urge upon students an investigation of its history. They are so far
removed from the moral imbecility that dwarfed the nature of these
people, that no lesson can be learned from their lives; and their time
can be so much more profitably spent in scientific research and study."

"You have not, then, reached the limits of scientific knowledge?" I
wonderingly inquired, for, to me, they had already overstepped its
imaginary pale.

"When we do we shall be able to create intellect at will. We govern to a
certain extent the development of physical life; but the formation of
the brain--its intellectual force, or capacity I should say--is beyond
our immediate skill. Genius is yet the product of long cultivation."

I had observed that dark hair and eyes were as indiscriminately mingled
in these portraits as I had been accustomed to find them in the living
people of my own and other coun