=William Morris’s Movement.=--It was the limitation of William Morris, that in his zeal for things Mediæval he had no toleration for any other forms of decoration. Moreover, he assumed that the art of the Middle Ages was created solely by craftsmen working in harmonious co-operation. He refused to believe that their work was controlled by a master designer and inveighed in general against architects as the cause of everything that is objectionable in subsequent architecture. In both respects, therefore, his influence was reactionary rather than helping forward. But, on the other hand, it has lasted and borne valuable fruit in promoting a regard for honest craftsmanship, on which he laid essential stress, and in reviving a recognition of the parts played by painting and sculpture and the decorative arts generally in alliance with architecture. Accordingly, one indirect result of Morris’s influence has been the increased attention given to the character and quality of simple masonry, a refreshing and salutary reaction from the notion that the interest of architecture depends on picturesque variety of detail and ornament. There was even a group of young architects who, inspired by Morris’s idea of craftsmanwork, sought to confine their designs to the simplest elements of building. They would be first, last, and all the time, builders; all precedents of architectural detail should be disregarded; they would confine themselves to the simplest abstractions of structural elements and out of these in time a new decorative vernacular might be evolved. It is interesting to note the analogy between this aim and that of Matisse and others in painting. In both arts it represents a revolt against the sophistication and mechanicalism that are apt to result from the repetition of school-learned styles. It would dig away the surface and get down to the sub-soil, in which elemental principles are rooted, in order to encourage a growth that more nearly may conform to modern needs and ideals. On the other hand, there is the obvious objection, too obvious by the way to be accepted as conclusive, that the past has so grown into the present, the inheritance has become so integral a part of present understanding and feeling, that one cannot eliminate it from one’s consciousness by taking thought, as one can strip one’s body of clothes. Meanwhile, although this argument seems plausible the fact remains that in painting, at any rate, many artists, ignoring argument in favour of actual doing, are clothing their ideas in new forms that are coming to seem reasonable to an increasing number of people.