GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 
therefore worth the doing; and surely one born with a natural 
taste for science, for music or for painting, yet condemned by 
circumstance to work for which he has no particular aptitude, 
need not fail to make it ‘“‘ worth the doing,” nor even to find a 
modicum of satisfaction in it. 
Experimental work delighted Morris, who cared less for the 
end attained, than the end unattained. 
I think all true artists show that feeling ; and, like Morris, spare 
no pains in the doing. Mr. Mackail, referring to a piece of cabbage- 
and-vine tapestry, executed at Kelmscott House, at which he 
sometimes laboured nine or ten hours a day, remarks “ and this 
was the work of a man who had a hundred other things to attend 
to, and was never in a hurry.” 
But when Morris felt a thing to be good he left it, he did not seek 
to make good better—he did not want to gild refined gold, to paint 
the lily. This may have been partly the secret of the stupendous 
amount of very varied work that he accomplished in a life that 
terminated at sixty-two. 
Another explanation was the great physical strength—and 
resulting unflagging energy—that enabled him, after sound and 
dreamless sleep, to rise, like a giant, refreshed, to the engrossing 
task of the moment, and to continue working at it all day ; another 
lay in the rare ability to detach himself from one piece of work 
whilst still interested in it, and to turn with freshness and en- 
thusiasm to another. He thus found sufficient recreation in the 
change of occupation ; but if he needed any further relaxation, 
he sought it, indoors, in back-gammon, cribbage and draughts, out 
of doors in angling, or in the good old game of bowls, for which the 
lawn at Kelmscott House offered excellent opportunities. 
Although Morris soon gave up his youthful intention to become 
an architect, yet architecture, using the term in its widest sense, 
was his mistress, for he held that painting and sculpture were 
but component parts of architecture, and had only intelligible pur- 
pose when employed decoratively in relation to an entire archi- 
tectural scheme. 
The ‘‘ sister arts,’ in his view, were not sisters at all-—sisterhood 
implying equality. Architecture was the mistress art, and sculpture 
and painting merely her agreeable handmaidens, very useful 
adjuncts to her state, when kept in due subordination. ‘‘ He 
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