ack on his posting tour of April 1876, he stayed
again at Sheffield, to meet a few friends of Swan's--Secularists,
Unitarians, and Quakers, who professed Communism. They had an interview
(reported in the Sheffield _Daily Telegraph_, April 28th, 1876), which
brought out rather curiously the points of difference between their
opinions and his. They refused to join the Guild because they would not
promise obedience, and help in its objects. Ruskin, however, was willing
to advance theirs. A few weeks afterwards he invited them to choose a
piece of ground for their Communist experiment. They chose a farm of
over thirteen acres at Abbeydale, which the Guild bought in 1877 at a
cost of L2,287 16s.6d. for their use--the communists agreeing to pay the
money back in instalments, without interest, by the end of seven years:
when the farm should be their own.

When it was actually in their hands they found that they knew nothing of
farming--and besides, were making money at trades they did not really
care to abandon. They engaged a man to work the farm for them: and then
another. They were told that the land they had chosen was--for farming
purposes--worthless. Their capital ran short; and they tried to make
money by keeping a tea-garden. The original proposer of the scheme wrote
to Ruskin, who sent L100:--the others returned the money. Ruskin
declined to take it back, and began to perceive that the Communists were
trifling. They had made no attempt to found the sort of community they
had talked about; neither their plans nor his were being carried out. So
when the original proposer and a friend of his named Riley approached
Ruskin again, they found little difficulty in persuading him to try them
as managers. The rest, finding themselves turned out by Riley, vainly
demanded "explanations" from Ruskin, who then was drifting into his
first attack of brain fever. So they declined further connection with
the farm; the Guild accepted their resignation, and undertook for the
time nothing more than to get the land into good condition again.

This was not the only land held by the St. George's Guild. It acquired
the acre of ground on which the Sheffield Museum stood, and a cottage
with a couple of acres near Scarborough. Two acres of rock and moor at
Barmouth had been given by Mrs. Talbot in 1872; and in 1877 Mr. George
Baker, then Mayor of Birmingham, gave twenty acres of woodland at
Bewdley in Worcestershire, to which at one time Mr. Rus