And then at last, after every sordid circumstance of intrigue and squabble and jealousy, one after another of the organisations he joined broke down. Half gratefully and half mournfully he disengaged himself, not because he did not believe in his principles, but because he saw that the difficulties were insuperable. He came back to the old life; he flung himself with renewed ardour into art and craftsmanship. He began to write the beautiful and romantic prose tales, with their enchanting titles, which are, perhaps, his most characteristic work. He learnt by slow degrees that a clean sweep of an evil system cannot be made in a period or a lifetime by an individual, however serious or strenuous he may be; he began to perceive that, if society is to put ideas in practice, the ideas must first be there, clearly defined and widely apprehended; and that it is useless to urge men to a life of which they have no conception and for which they have no desire. He had always held it to be a sacred duty for people to live, if possible, in whatever simplicity, among beautiful things; and it may be said that no one man in one generation has ever effected so much in this direction. He has, indeed, leavened and educated taste; he has destroyed a vile and hypocritical tradition of domestic art; by his writings he has opened a door for countless minds into a remote and fragrant region of unspoilt romance; and, still more than this, he remains an example of one who made a great and triumphant resignation of all that he held most dear, for the sake of doing what he thought to be right. He was not an ascetic, giving up what is half an incumbrance and half a terror; nor was he naturally a melancholy and detached person; but he gave up work which he loved passionately, and a life which he lived in a full-blooded, generous way, that he might try to share his blessings with others, out of a supreme pity for those less richly endowed than himself. How, then, should not this corner of the world, which he loved so dearly, speak to the spirit with a voice and an accent far louder and more urgent than its own tranquil habit of sunny peace and green-shaded sweetness! "You know my faith," wrote Morris from Kelmscott in a bewildered hour, "and how I feel I have no sort of right to revenge myself for any of my private troubles on the kind earth; and here I feel her kindness very specially, and am bound not to meet it with a long face." Noble and high-hearted words! for he of all men seemed made by nature to enjoy security and beauty and the joys of living, if ever man was so made. His very lack of personal sensitiveness, his unaptness to be moved by the pathetic appeal of the individual, might have been made a shield for his own peace; but he laid that shield down, and bared his breast to the sharp arrows; and in his noble madness to redress the wrongs of the world he was, perhaps, more like one of his great generous knights than he himself ever suspected.