minded and noble appeal to man's inherent sense of rightness and fellowship towards man.
It is not easy for thinkers of the present generation to understand how strange and wonderful in those days were the tidings of this discourse, alike to the few of us who were already on the Socialist path, and to the many who had hardly, if at all, ever considered the idea of the possibility of 'making the world anew.' Socialist principles generally, and Morris' own distinctive Socialist views, have now become more or less familiar to everyone; but how different it was in the days when Gladstonian Liberalism represented the utmost political hopes of civilisation! But not all the audience were in ready response. That the sympathies of the majority were, for the time being at least, fairly won by the lecture was testified alike by the eager interest with which they followed every word and by their frequent bursts of applause during its delivery. There were, however, a good sprinkling of dissentients, chiefly old Radicals, men with firmly-set lips and cogitative brows, who, while unable to withhold their applause from the democratic sentiments in the lecture, never for a moment lost sight of their inveterate individualist doctrines. These men shook their heads doubtfully from time to time as they realised how far beyond their accustomed political horizon the lecture would lead them. I remember observing with amusement when the meeting was over some of these old veterans lingering in their seats or standing in groups at the doorway of the hall, eagerly expostulating to one another concerning the danger or impossibility of the views which had been laid before them. One old Secularist whom I knew well remarked to me irritably, but with a wistful look in his deeply-recessed but wonderfully bright eyes, as he passed out by the platform door: 'Ah, young man, I heard a' that kind o' thing frae Robert Owen and Henry Hetherington fifty and more years ago. They were going to bring in the New Moral World, as they ca'd it, but they found human nature too hard a flint to flake. Na, na, it hasna'
