WILLIAM MORRIS:


              HIS SOCIALISTIC CAREER.

      EDITOR'S NOTE.-In the effort to offer an accurate portrait-sketch of
William Morris, the artist-socialist, handicraftsman, poet and man of business,
we
have thought best not to conceal those characteristics which separated him
so
widely from the men of his class and condition. The force and even vehemence
of his nature led him to extremes which are inconceivable to the calm-minded
and conservative.
      But in his violent aad sudden reversions from the active to the contemplative
life, we may se the effort of a truly practical man of his time to control
the
impulse of the prophet within him who looked forward to a distant age when
all social wrongs should be righted, and the relations of man to man should
be
those of brother to brother.
     We present the personality of William Morris with neither praise nor
blame; but simply with the suggestion that if we take him for all In all,
we shall
not soon see his like again.

SOCIAUSM is a word often vaguely and indiscrimin-
      ately used; since its definition differs greatly Mi the
various groups of those who profess its principles.
Therefore, in order to understand the methods of thought
and action of any individual classing himself among those
seeking a re-adjustment of the present relations between
man and man, it is necessary to discover the germ-ideas
of the individual, and to consider the environment which
forced these ideas into development and productiveness.
                             In the case of William Morris,
the evolution is most interesting, in that it presents a
slow, natural, normal process, divided        into  the three
phases observed in all living things: a weak infancy; a
vigorous maturity; a troubled and passive decline.
                             From documentary evidence,
we learn that in youth Morris had no objection to the
principle of monarchy. Indeed, his undergraduate utter-
ances in the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine (which
was founded by himself and his Exeter           llege friends)
have a true Carlylian ring, when he says.
                            '"People   will have a king, a
leader of some sort, after all: wherein they           are surely