34 Ellen Key However lacking the mother may have been in pedagogical insight, she had a true comprehension of her eldest daughter, and recognised her individual turn of mind. Both mother and father encouraged her intellectual development. Unusual freedom was allowed her early by her parents. The mother gave her Camilla CoUett's Amtmannen's dottrar (The Prefect's Daughters) when she was thir- teen years old. This story and other novels of good English authors—particularly those of Miss Muloch—made so deep an impression on the young girl, that her conceptions of love were formed on the same pattern of earnest- ness and genuineness which she has always worshipped in great and small things. She grew to womanhood without being troubled by such influences as often disturb adolescence. Silly talk, coquetry, and foolish ideas did not occupy her mind, filled as it was with dreams of love of a deeper kind. Even as a child she was interested in the larger human questions. Her great-grandmother had a volume of portraits from the Crimean War which inter- ested the six-year-old so much that the book was given her. Garibaldi inspired her enthusi- asm at the age of eight and ten, as Poland's struggle for freedom did at thirteen and four-