two will bring about real freedom: that modern nationalities are mere artificial devices for the commercial war that we seek to put an end to, and will disappear with it: and finally, that art, using that word in its widest and due signification, is not a mere adjunct of life which free and happy men can do without, but the necessary expression and indispensable instrument of human happiness."
On the 10th of June Morris writes from Kelmscott House to Mrs. Burne-Jones:
"I have had three outings,—no, four—two of them business though. Item to Chislehurst after a job: villas (some desperately ugly, others according to the new light) in the beautiful woods with lots of oak growing in them which to me is a treat, as I see so little oak about Kelmscott. Yes, villas and nothing but villas save a chemist's shop and a dry public house near the station: no sign of any common people, or anything but gentlemen and servants—a beastly place to live in, don't you think?
"Next place was better—in a way—a house of a very rich—and such a wretched uncomfortable place! a sham Gothic house of fifty years ago now being added to by a young architect of the commercial type—men who are very bad. Fancy, in one of the rooms there was not a pane of glass that opened! Well, let that flea stick on the wall. Stanmore is the name of the place: it is really quite pretty about, though only about ten miles from London (near Harrow), great big properties all about, the wall of one park next to the wall of another, which has at any rate preserved the trees. Smith and I walked thence to Edgware over most beautiful meadows with scarce a house to be seen till you come to Edgware, which is a little melancholy town or large village; old, not
