The Crimean War was not the first thing, and still less was it the last, that is significant in Miss Nightingale's life. The story of her earlier years is that of the building up of a character. It shows us a girl of high natural ability and of considerable attractions feeling her way to an ideal alike in practice and in speculation. Having found it, she was thrown into revolt against the environment of her home. We shall see her pursuing her ideal with consistent, though with self-torturing, tenacity against alike the obstacles and the temptations of circumstance. She had already served an apprenticeship when the call to the Crimea came. It was a call not to "sacrifice," but to the fulfilment of her dearest wishes for a life of active usefulness. Such is the theme of the _First Part_, which I have called "Aspiration." * * * * * Many other women have passed through similar experiences. But there is special significance in them in the case of Florence Nightingale--a significance both historic and personal. The glamour that surrounded her service in the Crimea, the wide-world publicity that was given to her name and deeds, invested with peculiar importance her fight for freedom. To do "as Florence Nightingale did" became an object of imitation which the well-to-do world was henceforth readier to condone, or even to approve; and thus the story of Miss Nightingale's earlier years is the history of a pioneer, on one side, in the emancipation of women. For the understanding of her own later life, the earlier years are all-important. They give the clue to her character, and explain much that would otherwise be puzzling or confused. Through great difficulties and at a heavy price she had purchased her birthright--her ideal of self-expression in work. On her return from the Crimea she was placed, on the one hand, owing to her fame, in a position of special opportunity; on the other hand, owing to illness, in a position of special disability. She shaped her life henceforward so as to make these two factors conform to the continued fulfilment of her ideal. I need not here forestall what subsequent chapters will abundantly illustrate. I will only say that the resultant effect was a manner of life and work, both extraordinary, and, to me at least, of the greatest interest. * * * * *