hope civilization had really begun. But as it is, the best thing one can wish for this country at least is, me seems, some great and tragical circumstances, so that if they cannot have pleasant life, which is what one means by civilization, they may at least have a history and something to think of—all of which won't happen in our time. Sad grumbling—but do you know, I have got to go to a wedding next Tuesday: and it enrages me to think that I lack courage to say, I don't care for either of you, and you neither of you care for me, and I won't waste a day out of my precious life in grinning a company grin at you two.
"And so good-bye again, with many thanks.
"William Morris."
Yet his daily work went on with seemingly unabated energy. He kept writing again and again to Fairfax Murray at Rome for supplies of the fine Roman vellum for illumination. The vellum manuscript of the Odes of Horace was begun in March, 1874: about the same time he was planning another, of his own "Cupid and Psyche," with pictures from the designs which Burne-Jones had, five years before, made for the original scheme of the illustrated "Earthly Paradise." The Virgil was begun towards the end of the year, when he had at last obtained a sufficient supply of vellum of the larger size required for a folio.
Meanwhile the dye-house at Queen Square was occupying more and more of his attention. It had long been plain to him that the art of dyeing, fallen into a deplorable condition since the introduction of the anilines, lay at the foundation of the production of all coloured stuffs, whetherprinted, woven, or embroidered. A profound study which he made this year of all that
