protection of the natural beauties of England, as in Epping Forest or on the upper Thames, against the inroads of planned ugliness or inconsiderate change, his voice and pen were always active when called upon. Nor did he decline from the unobtrusive work of education towards the growth of a future Socialism. It is to these last years that some of his noblest and most significant utterances on the ideals of human life belong—notably among them the preface to Ruskin's chapter "On the Nature of Gothic," and the letter of November, 1893, on the Miners' Question, his latest and most carefully-worded confession of faith.
In October, 1891, an exhibition of pictures of the Pre-Raphaelite School was held in the Municipal Art Gallery at Birmingham, and Morris was asked to open it with an address on the Pre-Raphaelite painters. The speech which he then made represents the most formal discourse he had yet given on the art of painting, as one distinct from, yet in the closest relation to, the arts which he himself practised. It perhaps expresses his views not the less exactly because it was spoken on the spur of the moment, and was the imperfect but immediate utterance of his habitual feelings. The curiously halting sentences and inconclusive termination are accounted for very simply. He had meant to think out what he would say on the journey down to Birmingham, but fell asleep in the train and arrived with nothing prepared.
Professing himself a humble member of the school, he stated as his deliberate conviction that its principal masters, Rossetti, Millais, Holman Hunt, and Burne-Jones, were names that ranked alongside of the very greatest in the great times of art: then, not labouring this point, he commended their example to all artists, not primarily for any technical quality, but for the virtues
