GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 
circumstances, At one period of his life he had to attend the 
meetings of a board of directors, and actually kept a tall hat for 
the occasion, At the end of four years he resigned his directorship 
and solemnly sat down upon the hat, which was never replaced ! 
His little daughter one day found it, and asked her mother what 
the strange object was, and whether Papa ever wore it. 
I myself once heard Morris lecture; it was towards the end of 
his life, on an occasion supposed to be big with possibilities for the 
revival of the arts in this country—the meeting of an Art Congress 
in Liverpool. His delivery, so far as I recall it, was not effective, 
and I cannot recollect what he said, but I remember well his appear- 
ance—his sturdy figure, his artisan-like dress, and his cheerful, 
kindly, rubicund face. Artists, and those men of light and leading 
whose work came at all within the scope of the conference—from 
the President of the Royal Academy downwards—had accepted 
the cordial invitation of the sanguine and enthusiastic promoters 
of this festival of the Arts, and crowded to the sea-city of the north 
to take part in the proceedings. I remember well certain grandiose 
prophecies to the effect that Liverpool, proudly standing on the 
banks of Mersey, would become, to the present age, what Venice, 
mistress of the seas, had once been, 7.e., the commercial centre of the 
fine arts. 
The congress was to inaugurate a new era, and to be the first of 
many similar meetings. Alas! for the futility of human hopes, 
the thing was repeated once at Edinburgh, where Morris attended 
and afterwards stated, I think in a letter, that only Walter Crane 
and he himself spoke to any purpose: after that it fizzled out, 
and nothing more came of a very praiseworthy undertaking. But, 
in the meantime, the first occasion was a considerable success. Sir 
Frederick Leighton presided, and the various sections met, each 
under the presidency of a man distinguished in his own branch 
of art; papers were read, and the discussions that followed them 
were interesting if not always illuminating. As a social event it 
was noteworthy. Hospitality, always great in Liverpool, was 
unbounded ; civic and private entertainments were the order of 
the day and night. To this great gathering of people came many 
genuinely earnest in the cause of art; came the dilettanti, and the 
simply curious ; and those who followed, because their superiors 
in the social scale set the fashion ; came too William Morris. On 
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