We live amidst beauty without fear of becoming effeminate, ... we have plenty to do, and on the whole enjoy doing it. What more can we ask of life?
What indeed? It must be remembered that he says 'we.' The delight is complete only because it is common to all.
'In time past, indeed, men were told to love their kind, to believe in the religion of humanity and so forth. But look you, just in the degree that a man had elevation of mind and refinement enough to be able to value this idea was he repelled by the obvious aspect of the individuals composing the mass which he was to worship; and he could only evade that repulsion by making a conventional abstraction of mankind that had little actual or historical relation to the race, which to his eyes was divided into blind tyrants on the one hand and apathetic degraded slaves on the other. But now, where is the difficulty in accepting the religion of humanity, when the men and women who go to make up humanity are free, happy, and energetic at least, and most commonly beautiful of body also, and surrounded by beautiful things of their own fashioning, and a nature bettered and not worsened by contact with mankind?'
That was Morris's clear conviction as to the whole question, and the word that he uses to describe the new meaning of work—that is the remedy of all the social evils against which he was in revolt—is art.
This, then, was the creed and the hope that Morris set out in detail in News from Nowhere. That the dream was farther from realization than he thought may be the unhappy truth, but of this at least we are sure, that he dreamt a good thing. The picture that he shows us is of healthy, aspiring, joyous men and women, full of sweet humour and clean passion, who, far from having lost all incentive to endeavour, have found a new and tremendous cause for endeavour in every hour of the day. For them work and worship have become one, and of the union has come life. The prose that Morris uses is beautiful because perfectly adapted to its purpose. In the practical discussions on particular questions the style is swift and incisive; in the descriptions of the life of his new world it is coloured by all his tenderness and love for men and natural beauty. 'The earth and the growth and the life of it! If I could but say or show how I love it!' It is a cry always ready upon his lips. And he brings to his work here, too, a charming and whimsical humour. The little sketch of that wonderful person the Golden Dustman is a master-stroke of genuinely human comedy. And the humour may be leavened with admirable satire; he has in his mind a certain day in Trafalgar Square, when 'unarmed and peaceable people were attacked by ruffians armed with bludgeons.' 'And they put up with that?' says Dick—
'We had to put up with it; we couldn't help it.'
The old man looked at me keenly and said: 'You seem to know a great deal about it, neighbour! And is it really true that nothing came of it?'
'This came of it,' said I, 'that a good many people were sent to prison because of it.'
'What, of the bludgeoners?' said the old man. 'Poor devils!'
'No, no,' said I, 'of the bludgeoned.'