ther, he was going through a variety of personal experiences, some of which involved his disappointment in deeply cherished plans. For

Upton became also a serious matter after his illness, as he found it almost impossible to make the daily journeys required by his attention to the business. Several compromises were thought of, the most enticing being the remov

URNE-JONES FOR PR

DISE," CUT ON WOO

die of despair and weariness if his daily work were taken from him unless he could at once make something else his daily work, and he is constantly drawing persuasive pictures of the charm of the various handicrafts-that of weaving for example, his description of which would invite the most discontented mind. He does not call the weaver's craft a dull one: "If he be set to doing things which are worth doing-to watch the web growing day by day almost magically, in anticipation of the time when it is to be taken out and one can see it on the right side in all its well-schemed beauty-to make something beautiful that will last out of a few threads of silk and wool, seems to me not an unpleasant way of earning one's livelihood, so long only as one lives and works in a pleasant place, with work-day not too long, and a book or two to be got at." His own weavers were some of them boys trained in the shop from a condition of absolute ignorance of drawing and of the craft to such an efficiency as enabled them to weave the Stanmore tapestry, one panel of which took two years to the making, and which was of the utmost elaboration and magnificence of design. The exigencies of the business presently made it necessary to devote the whole of the premises in Queen Square to the work going on there, and the Morris family removed in 1872 to a small house between Hammersmith and Turnham Green, near Chiswick Lane, Morris retaining a couple of rooms in the Queen Square house for his use when busy there. Even the extended quarters soon proved insufficient, however, and in 1877 rooms were taken in Oxford Street for showing and selling the work of the firm, the manufacturing departments being still ensconced in Queen Square. In 1881 these also were transferred to more suitable premises. The dyeing and cotton-printing demanded workshops by the side of some stream of clear water "fit to dye with," and after much search Morris found an ideal situation on the banks of the little Wandle River, near Wimbledon.

tt Mano

tt Mano

he nearest town, Lechlade, to whose churchyard Shelley lent distinction by writing a poem there. The nearest station-town was Farringdon, so far off that the carrier who brought railway parcels to the occupants of the Manor charged six shillings and sixpence for each trip. "Thus," writes Rossetti, who was chronically short of money, "a good deal of inconvenience tempers the attractions of the place." Nothing, however, unless the presence of Rossetti, who was "unromantically discontented" there, tempered them for Morris. In an article for The Quest for November, 1895, he describes the house in the most minute detail, accentuating its charms with a touch of comment for each that falls like a caress. The roofs are covered with the beautiful stone slates of the district, "the most lovely covering which a roof can have." The "battering" or leaning back of the walls is by no means a defect but a beauty, "taking from the building a rigidity which otherwise would mar it," and the stout studded partitions of the

embered happiness. It is supremely characteristic of him that he could perfectly strike this note while still living in hale activity upon the spot he is to praise with the tenderness of reminiscence. The great virtue of his temperament lay in this peculiar intensity of realisation. He needed neither loss nor change to spur

ove! for

cometh af

energy with which he seized those pleasures, the sturdiness with which he filled himself with those satisfactions. When News from Nowhere was written, Morris had lived the better part of twenty years in close relation with t

a few minutes we had passed through a deep eddying pool into the sharp stream that ran fro

new the lock must be. A low wooded ridge bounded the river-plain to the south and south-east, whence we had come, and a few low houses lay about its feet and up its slope. I turned a little to my right and through the hawthorn sprays and long shoots of the wild roses could see the flat country spreading out far away under the sun of the

aid backwater. We crossed the road, and again almost without my will my hand raised the latch of a door in the wall, and we stood presently on a stone path which led up to the old house to which fate in the shape of Dick had so strangely brought me in this world of men. My companion gave a sigh of pleased surprise and enjoyment, nor did I wonder, for the garden between the wall and the house was redolent of the June flowers, and the roses were rolling ov

ardless of all the turmoil that was going on in cities and courts, is lovely still amidst all the beauty which these latter days have created; and I do not wonder at our friends 'tend

ed wall as if to embrace it, and cried out: 'O me! O me! How I love the earth and the seasons a

e roof, where of old time the tillers and herdsmen of the manor slept, but which a-nights seemed now, by the small size of the beds, and the litter of useless and disre

noted in this people elsewhere, seemed here to have given place to the feeling that the house itself and its associations was the ornament of the co

try, originally of no artistic value, but now faded into pleasant grey tones which harmonised thoroughly well

presently became silent, and then scarce conscious of anything but that I was there in that o

e river, and Morris gained much satisfaction from the thought that the water flowing by it had come in its due course past the beloved Kelmscott garden. A somewhat inconvenient touch of sentiment caused him to give h

setti said of him, "There goes the last of the Vikings!" and his mood in visiting Iceland was not unlike that of a modernised Viking returning to his home. Thoughts of the country's great past were constantly with him. The boiling geysers, the conventional attraction for tourists who "never heard the names of Sigurd and Brunhild, of Njal, or Gunnar, or Grettir, or Gisli, or Gudrun," were a source of irritation to him. His pilgrimages to the homes of the ancient traditions were the episodes of his journey worth thinking about, and about them he thought much and vigorously, seeing in imagination the figures of the old heroes going about summer and winter, attending to their haymaking and fishing and live stock, eating almost the same food and living on the same ground as the less imposing Norsemen of the present. "Lord!" he writes, "what littleness and helplessness has taken

back upon his mind as he reverted to these experiences. Mr. Mackail gives an amusing instance of the way in which the interest uppermost with him became an obsession leading to the most childlike extravagances. During a holiday tour in Belgium he came to a place where neither French nor English was spoken. He therefore "made a desperate effort at making himself understood by haranguing the amazed inn-keeper in

FOR WINDOW EXECUT

BLE OF TH

STAINED-GLASS WINDOW EX

BLE OF TH

o accept any consideration. "The other three," says Mr. Mackail, "stood on the strict letter of their legal rights." Naturally the relations between Morris and the latter became grievously strained, and with Rossetti the break was absolute and irremediable. In passing out of Morris's life, as he then did, he certainly left it more serene, but with him went also the vivifying influence of his genius. In considering the very unfortunate part played by him in the conflict among the members of the firm, it is fair to give a certain weight to details emphasised in Mr. William Rossetti's account as modifying-to a slight degree, it is true, but still modifying-the sordid aspect of Rossetti's action. Madox Brown, who was one of the partners wishing not to forego their legal rights, was getting on in years and was a comparatively poor man. He had always counted on the firm "as an important eventual accession to his professional earnings." No one familiar with Rossetti's character can doubt that a desire to stand by his old friend and teacher in such a matter would have a strong influence with him. To his brother's mind, his attitude was throughout "one of conciliation," with the wish "to adjust contending claims had that but been possible." "He himsel

t about this time of a breakdown of a serious and permanent nature in the health of his eldest daughter. This he took d