For religion is a mystery, into which not all of us are initiated. The road to the Kingdom of Heaven, as it was well said of old time, is narrow, and blessed are they who, having reached it, stay but a little while! To drink deep of that cup is to have all the motor energies of life paralyzed. Art remains to give us the same joy and refreshment, in more various, wholesome, and acceptable forms. For art is nothing less than the world as we ourselves make it, the world re-moulded nearer to the heart’s desire. In this construction of a world around us, in harmonious response to all our senses, we have at once a healthy exercise for our motor activities, and the restful satisfaction of our sensory needs. Art, as no mere passive hyperæsthesia to external impressions, or exclusive absorption in a single sense, but as a many-sided and active delight in the wholeness of things, is the great restorer of health and rest to the energies distracted by our turbulent modern movements. Thus understood, it has the firmest of scientific foundations; it is but the reasonable satisfaction of the instinctive cravings of the organism, cravings that are not the less real for being often unconscious. Its satisfaction means the presence of joy in our daily life, and joy is the prime tonic of life. It is the gratification of the art-instinct that makes the wholesome stimulation of labour joyous; it is in the gratification of the art-instinct that repose becomes joyous. The fanatical commercialism that has filled so much of our century made art impossible--so impossible that beyond one or two voices, raised to hysterical scream, no one dared to protest against it. The satisfaction of the art-instinct is now one of the most pressing of social needs. In England, William Morris probably stands first among those who have perceived this weighty fact. A man of immense energies and varied activities, one of the greatest modern masters of English speech and poet-craft, an ardent advocate of the most advanced social ideas of his time, he has slowly felt his way to the realization of the truth, that the secret of good living is even economically involved in the communalization of art. Our most glorious dreamer, he has placed this conception at the foundation of his lovely and substantial visions.