One by one the ladies passed on into the supper room, followed more slowly by Conrad Jorgon, who left the door ajar, for the maid was extinguishing the lamps in his wife's boudoir.

And the meal began with much energetic play of knives and forks and everybody talking at once-as a matter of course. The inquisitorial conversation was necessarily of a hybrid nature, shrewdly directed by practical housekeeping minds, each intent on its own particular bargain. It is needless to state that throughout the meal, and although she was looking fagged and wan, and her voice was growing hoarse and her throat ached, Marion Carr was furiously assailed with appeals and questions on a hundred and one different topics, to all of which she made answer with slow, clear, careful enunciation of every syllable. Herr Jorgon alone it was who at last put in a plea in behalf of the unfortunate English

woman.

"You are looking extremely tired, Mrs. Carr. Do rest a little. My wife is a perfect magpie."

At this juncture Marion Carr was compelled to consult her watch. It was ten o'clock. She had been hard at work since four o'clock. How she managed to make her escape that night was never afterward quite clear to her. But escape at last she did, descending the great stone staircase which led from Frau Jorgon's apartment on the first étage to the courtyard below, preceded by a sleepy maid carrying a lamp which she held high above her head. The great house door opened, then closed and locked behind her. With a stolid Gute Nacht from the maid, Marion Carr passed out into the deserted street. She breathed quickly and walked passionately, with her grave eyes fixed on the eternal stars.

"Another day's work done," she murmured. "But am I any nearer to my goal?"-Nineteenth Century.

1.

As yet we are too near William Morris for adequate perspective. The fitting period for deliberate adjudication will come in due course, but that period is certainly not within a few days of the pathetic moment when, with every suitable adjunct of impressive simplicity, he was laid to rest near the summer home he loved so well. Sad

is it to think what woeful inroads Death has made of late on the distinguished band connected more or less intimately with the Pre-Raphaelite revival in Art and Poetry-sad to think that in one year we have lost Millais and Morris. Despite his originality, as strong in youth as in mature life, Morris was influenced deeply by some of those with whom he came in contact in his undergraduate days at Exeter College, Oxford, and especially by his most intimate friend, now Sir Edward Burne-Jones. Through the latter he came to know Dante Gabriel Rossetti,

and afterward Mr. Holman Hunt, Mr. Swinburne, and Mr. W. M. Rossetti. These associations, fostered by his close connection with The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, which, it will be recollected, he supported with funds, must have done much to emancipate him from the narrow trammels and the needless prejudices then, much more than now, the attributes of the mercantile class whence he sprang. In his own way he was fond of Walthamstow-his birthplace as one or two stray allusions to it in News from Nowhere testify. In The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine some of his earliest poems, critical papers, and prose stories appeared during 1856, the prose stories perhaps especially remarkable as coming from the pen of one only twenty two. As a factor in his artistic development at this juncture, we must not forget his apprenticeship to George Edmund Street, the famous architect, which ended, however, before the usual term.

House of the Wolfings was followed by The Roots of the Mountains, which the author himself preferred to his other writings of this class. His admirers

will look forward to the issue in due course of The Water of the Wondrous Isles, now passing through the press, and particularly to The Sundering Flood, his last effort. Concerning The Well at the World's End (which, though issued in a limited and sumptuous edition from the Kelmscott Press six months ago, was only published by Messrs. Longman on the day of his death) he told me there was an old Scottish ballad called by that name, and though he had never read the ballad he had heard the title, and took a fancy to it.

His very faults as a literary worker arose from causes which, in other men, would almost be accounted merits. Chief among these faults was, perhaps, diffuseness, springing, in truth, from his marvellous intellectual vigor and from his supreme gift of invention. Indeed his invention, like a strong mountain stream in flood, swept him on ward irresistibly until he had reached the close of the poem or tale. Once I heard him say any one ought to be able to write a novel in six weeks, and that then it ought either to be so good or so bad that no subsequent revision could alter it materially. He said much more to similar purport, and it is mentioned here as an evidence that, in his judgment, the value of a literary product depended on the original inspiration, not on subsequent revision. His own activity in letters knew no abatement, and it was easier for him to begin writing on a fresh theme than to labor with patience at revising what he had written already.

It is unnecessary to speak here at great length concerning his views on Socialism-views which he derived in some sort from the teachings of Mr. Ruskin. Being on such matters totally out of sympathy with Morris, I am not the best judge of the strength of his arguments in their favor. But no candid hearer of his incidental allusions to the subject in conversation could doubt his absolute sincerity. Whether he erred or not we must not forget that he was quite unselfish, and

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his chief aim was to make people happy. It may be that his Socialism is best expressed by some of his own closing words in News from Nowhere: Go on living while you may, striving, with whatsoever pain and labor needs must be, to build up little by little the new day of fellowship, and rest, and happiness.'

An interesting and useful essay might be written on the influence Morris exerted over house decoration in all its branches, and the change-wellnigh the revolution-he effected in it. This result-a most notable one, if we recollect the stubborn conservatism of average English people in their homes -would never have been attained had not Morris (most daringly, as it has always seemed to me) determined to give practical effect to his theories of decoration by devoting his money and his time to the firm of Messrs. Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co., in which, for a while, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Ford Madox Brown and other friends were partners with him. Not always is it that such courage gets its material reward as in this instance.

II.

By the death of William Morris England has lost her man of greatest genius. In making this avowal of his honest opinion the present writer must not be understood as forgetting the other men of genius still happily left to her; in particular he must not be understood as drawing any hasty or rash comparison between the noble poet who has just departed, and that other illustrious poet, possibly the greater poet of the two, William Morris's life-long friend, Mr. Swinburne-concerning whose paramount claims as a poet William Morris spoke always with a characteristic force of eloquent persuasiveness which made at least one of his auditors feel that it is only the really supreme poet who can judge adequately of another supreme poet. In making such a remark concerning William Morris, he who now writes is thinking merely of Morris's high achievements in fields so various-thinking of the vast accumulated riches of Morris's life-work.

What impressed me most about William Morris (who granted me the honor of personal intercourse with him in his later years) was an indescribable sense of power, arising in part, I fancy, because of his commanding presence-a phrase I use advisedly, and in full remembrance of the fact that in stature he would be regarded generally as below rather than above the middle height, and that he eschewed altogether the meretricious advantages of carefully arranged costume.

I regret sometimes I did not know him in the full vigor of early physical strength-during the period in which the best representation of him is the portrait by Mr. G. F. Watts. If, as is likely to be the case, this picture will pass eventually into the National Portrait Gallery, it is indeed well. For it is fortunate that our greatest living painter should have produced as one of his masterpieces the likeness of one of the most deeply interesting personalities that our century has brought forth.

As I write I seem to see Morris in the study of his house at Hammersmith -a house occupied formerly by Dr. George Macdonald. Once or twice, when no others were present, I found him seated at his large table, generally kept uncovered and free from books, several pages of manuscript on blue foolscap paper before him. With a quick upward glance he would drop his pen, and begin to talk. His eyes were blue-gray in tint, and in repose they might be described as meditative, not, however, even then, without a something in their glance that betokened the boundless energy of the man. But when his face was absolutely still one noticed rather the lofty uprightness of the brow than the eyes. The change which came over his features on commencing to speak reminded me of a similar change which my uncle (who, as a law-apprentice, had seen Sir Walter Scott while still a Clerk of Session) told me came over Sir Walter's features in animation- -a change that transformed, as it were, the whole man.

When Morris spoke, especially when the theme was anything in which he had real interest, his eyes gleamed,

and he became engrossed with that one theme, and generally that one theme was exhausted before another was introduced. Occasionally there was an aspect almost of sternness about his face when at rest-an aspect caused in part by the great strength of will apparent in the set of the lower jaw and in the compressed lips. When the mood took him he was not disturbed easily, for I have seen him at work on a border for his Kelmscott "Chaucer," and talking all the time.

When his pipe was finished, a favorite attitude was to sit for an instant or two, with legs somewhat extended, and then to rise and stand for a while before the fire before going again to refill it at the antique jar on the table.

Sometimes in the midst of his flow of brilliant conversation, and without ceasing to speak, he would rise and, passing his fingers over his beard or through his gray hair, rough and curly, would pace swiftly across the floor of his uncarpeted study, and look for a few minutes at some volume taken from a long antique book-case—a bookcase containing many precious tomes, some in black letter, as well as rare editions of the English classic poets. His study windows commanded a picturesque view over the Thames, which, at this place, and conspicuously its opposite bank, is not without some touches of beauty. But here let me pause to quote his own inimitable description of this view in News from Nowhere-which, romance though it be, contains not a little poetic autobiography:

sky, and as the homefarer caught sight of it,

"There was a young moon half-way up the

tangled in the branches of a tall old elm, he could scarce bring to his mind the shabby London suburb where he was, and he felt as if he were in a pleasant country place-pleasanter, indeed, than the deep country was as he had known it.

"He came right down to the river-side and lingered a little, looking over the low wall to note the moonlit river, near upon high water, go swirling and glittering up to Chiswick Eyot as for the ugly bridge below, he did not notice it or think of it."

To be present at five o'clock tea in Morris's beautiful dining-room was delightful. About everything there was a unique and utterly indescribable

combination of absolute simplicity and refinement. The old-fashioned English oblong table (around which we sat) drawn near the window, and without cloth save occasionally at meals; the dainty blue china; the brown kettle of hot water singing on the hob; the exquisite Rossetti masterpieces; and the delicate and rare furniture, made up an ensemble never to be forgotten. When sometimes, on a summer afternoon, one saw beyond, the spreading and graceful trees of the extensive old-fashioned garden, so shaped that its exact size in length was not discernible, everything looked like "A haunt of ancient peace." It was a pleasure to wander in it with him, as he had a real fondness for this garden; now it is mournful to remember that over exertion, when returning from his last walk there, accelerated his death.

III.

His sense of humor was keen.

I have a vivid recollection of the first time I saw him. It was at a meeting of the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings, held in the spring of 1883, I think, in the rooms of the Society of Arts in the Adelphi, and even then and there he was attired in the blue serge suit and blue flannel shirt, with which he will always be as sociated. He and the late Lord Houghton were on the platform, and if I mistake not, Morris was the President of the Society for the year, although not in the chair on this occasion. One of the speakers ended his remarks by say ing that, until our President can provide us with a worthier poem, every loyal member of this Society should

take as his motto-

"Renovation
Is vexation,

Restoring's just as bad;

The the-o-ree

It puzzles me,

The practice makes me mad."

In the general laugh which followed this neat parody Morris joined heartily. He said to me once, with just the suggestion of a smile on his ruddy face, "I took a small glass of champagne at lunch to-day, and champagne never suits me, but I suppose if I went

to a doctor about my indigestion, he would probably act like the Persian doctor in the story."

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How was that?" I inquired.

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A man," he answered, went to a Persian doctor and said, 'I've got indigestion, because I have eaten burnt toast, which does not suit me.' By and by the doctor sent him round a lotion for the eyes. Whereupon the man came to him again, furiously angry, and exclaimed, You fool, I want something for my stomach, not my eyes.' 'Oh,' replied the doctor, since you knew that burnt toast did not agree with you, and you took it all the same, I thought you must require a lotion to make you see clearly!""

Like Dr. Johnson, he thought that a ship at sea was as bad as a prison, with the further drawback that one might be drowned in it. For, when talking in his gleeful way to a friend, I heard him say, very drolly, "One of the disadvantages of Socialism, when it comes, will be that we shan't find anybody willing to become a sailor." Real kindness and good nature were always visible in him, and the irritability sometimes also visible, was more the result, I used to think, of his marvellous energy and his consequent resulting impatience of control, stupidity, or slowness, than sharp temper. To a man of his quick and ever-alert intelligence and wholesome freedom from many silly conventions, the prejudices and inanities of ordinary people must have appeared more than usually silly. Fully conscious of his own position in English letters, and regarding Mr. Swinburne as his only equal among living poets, he was nevertheless far too considerable a man to be vain in the ordinary acceptation of the term, and although he yielded often to humorous exaggeration in speaking of others, he was not at bottom unconscious of their merits, nor was he deficient in critical acumen. Biassed his literary judgments frequently were (as was perhaps only natural), but warped they were not. Originality was, of course, one of the characteristics of his conversation. But, paradoxical as the assertion may appear at first sight, it is equally true to assert that you could generally tell the sort of thing he