Next to their exiling policy, their educational reform was one of the most important starting-points of their new and swiftly progressive civilisation. I was astonished at the length and frequency of my isolations during the period of my training. For years I saw few or none but the two proparents to whose care I had been handed over, even after I had been introduced to other sections of the community. In the process of my advance towards Limanoran habits and powers, I was often left for days together to my own thoughts, and yet in the presence of some supervising power that seldom made itself definite to any of my senses or even to my mind. Throughout these intervals of solitude, I felt continual suggestion of noble thought and emotion come to me from my surroundings, the divine music that rang so softly and variedly amid the silences, the deep meaning of the arts that filled every corner of my life, the magnetic energy that rayed forth from unknown centres upon my spirit. The finest impulses of my nature became dominant in me at these times and grew in strength. I came to recognise the power that such solitude gave to character. Without it I should have inclined to become the echo of my tutors, even though they were ever impressing upon me the necessity of thinking and acting for myself. They were so noble, so far above the men and women I had met or heard of or read of that it was a hard task not to fall down and worship them. Once I had the misfortune to question the benefits of prolonged seclusion. I urged the praises of friendship so common in the literature of my country, and spoke with great fervour of the pleasures of social intercourse, the keen emulation on the path of development it stirred, and the wide influence which the finest characters had. I painted in glowing colours all that refined society might become,--the witty Parisian salons of the eighteenth century, the artistic circles in the fifteenth-century Italian republics, the brilliant association of thoughtful men in some of the London literary sets of the nineteenth century. What could be nobler than such intellectual brilliancy of intercourse as is recorded in the biographies of the great men and beautiful and refined women of the West! Then I turned to the happiness of children and youth together in the gardens or woods or on the shores of the ocean, and their sadness when they moped alone in their rooms or at their books. Companionship was the very life of childhood and youth. Did not solitary musings even in maturity produce morbid self-introspection? The intercourse, even with superiors and elders, was somewhat unwholesome for the young spirit,--it crushed spontaneity and naturalness and confidence in one’s inner self.