find anything to say. Bullock suggested that he might make a few comments on Bellamy's book—which Morris told him he had just read. Morris brightened at the suggestion and on the Sunday evening gave a running commentary on the book, incidentally introducing by way of contrast some of his own ideas of how people might live and work in 'a new day of fellowship, rest, and happiness.' Doubtless it was this lecture which gave him the idea of writing 'News from Nowhere,' which immediately afterwards began to appear in weekly instalments in the Commonweal, and was intended as a counterblast to 'Looking Backward.' It was written for the most part in hurried snatches when travelling by train to and from the City.
Morris never intended, however, 'News from Nowhere' to be regarded as a serious plan or conspectus of Socialism, and was both surprised and amused when he found the little volume solemnly discussed as a text-book of Socialist politics, economics, and morality. The story was meant to be a sort of Socialist jeu d'esprit—a fancy picture, or idyll, or romance. It is unlikely that Morris, while deprecating the assumption in 'Looking Backward' that we can forecast the regulations and details of a future society, would himself fall into that very error.
Yet one meets with readers of 'News from Nowhere' who appear to be possessed with the idea that such whimsicalities in the story as the conversion of the present buildings of the Houses of Parliament into a manure depot, the free provision of all manner of fancifully carved tobacco pipes, and the going about of road-dustmen in gorgeous medieval raiment, constitute prime factors in Morris' conception of the Socialist Commonwealth! Nevertheless the book contains not only delightful descriptions of the beautiful stretches of the Thames Valley and charming delineations of men and women moving amidst most pleasant circumstances of life and industry, but pages of dialogue and reflection that reveal the richest thoughts of his mind and the
