WILLIAM     MORRIS
  for him an easy victory. His accomplishments in the
  various arts and crafts to which he successively devoted
  himself, have been chronicled and criticised from time to
  time, and in various countries and languages. But it is
  not generally appreciated that his art and his Socialism
  were associated integrally with each other, or, rather,
  that they were but two aspects of the same thing. How-
  ever, this fact becomes evident to any one who will follow
  his life which, in its intellectual aspects, although it was
  apparently subject to abrupt changes, was, in reality, a
  logical expansion of inter-dependent ideas.
                           It is as an artist-socialist that
  we will briefly consider him.
                           The traditions of his family
  surrounded him with conservatism. He was born of
  affluent parents whose wealth increased during his child-
  hood and youth. His father, a London City banker, gain-
  ing a controlling interest in productive copper-mines, grew
  wealthy beyond his own expectations, and was thus able
  to afford his children the most desirable educational and
  social advantages, as also to secure to them, at his own
  death, a very considerable fortune.
                           William  Morris, the eldest of
  five sons, was destined for the Church, and for that reason,
  was entered, at the age of fourteen, at Marlboro College,
  there to be educated under clerical masters. Even in
  these early days, the characteristics of the future artist
  and thinker were most marked and singular. The boy
  was father to the man. The lax discipline, the weakness
  Of the school organization acted in no unfavorable way
  upon the scholar whose moral and physical strength gave
Shimt a unique place among the student body. Rather,
! these conditions afforded him oortunity for cultivat
?i ~his individual tastes and for developing his peculiar
i powers. The school library at Marlboro was rich in
i works upon archaeology and ecclesiastical architecture,
i and through these, witha-his remarkable power of asstim-