Towards the movement which thus took shape, the way here, as in so many other instances, had been pointed out by the far-ranging genius of Ruskin long before any steps were, or could be, taken towards its realization. The prophet had, as usual, been long before his age. The whole of the Socialism with which Morris identified himself so prominently in the eighties had been implicitly contained, and the greater part of it explicitly stated, in the pages of "Unto This Last" in 1862, when Morris had just begun the work of his life as a manufacturer. And so now, the new movement in art, which has had so powerful an effect in the succeeding decade, took a direction which had been suggested by Ruskin ten years earlier. Writing to Morris on the 3rd of December, 1878, Ruskin, after thanking him for being the only person who went "straight to the accurate point of the craftsman's question," added these striking words: "How much good might be done by the establishment of an exhibition, anywhere, in which the Right doing, instead of the Clever doing, of all that men know how to do, should be the test of acceptance!" The times were not then ripe. But now this was one main object with which the Arts and Crafts Society was founded, and this was the test which, to the best of its power and will, it attempted to apply.
The project had taken form in the latter months of 1887. Morris, though for it, as for the whole movement out of which it sprang, he was so largely the ultimate source, had no share in its origination, and was at first, with his strong common sense, inclined to lay stress on the difficulties that stood in the way.
"One thing will have to be made clear," he wrote on the last day of that year, "i.e., who is to find the money. I can't help thinking on reflection that some
