take Holy Orders. He was of Welsh family with a Celtic
fervour for learning, and a Celtic instinct for what was beautiful, and
at King Edward's School he had made friends with several men who came up
to Pembroke College about the same time. Their friendship was extended
to his new acquaintance from Marlborough. Here Morris found himself in
the midst of a small circle who shared his enthusiasm for literature and
art, and among whom he quickly learned to express those ideas which had
been stirring his heart in his solitary youth. Through the knowledge
gained by close observation and a retentive memory, through his
impetuosity and swift decision, Morris soon became a leader among them.
Carlyle and Ruskin, Keats and Tennyson, were at this time the most
potent influences among them; and when Morris was not arguing and
declaiming in the circle at Pembroke, he was sitting alone with
Burne-Jones at Exeter reading aloud to him for hours together French
romances and other mediaeval tales. Young men of to-day, with a wealth
of books on their shelves and of pictures on their walls, with popular
reproductions bringing daily to their doors things old and new, can
little realize the thrill of excitement with which these men discovered
and enjoyed a single new poem of Tennyson or an early drawing by Millais
or Rossetti. How they were quickened by ever fresh delight in the beauty
and strangeness of such things, how they responded to the magic of
romance and dreamed of a day when they should themselves help in the
creation of such work, how they started a magazine of their own and
essayed short flights in prose or verse, can best be read in the volumes
which Lady Burne-Jones[50] has dedicated to the memory of her husband.
This period is of capital importance in the life of William Morris, and
the year 1855 especially was fraught with momentous decisions.

[Note 50: _Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones_, by G. B.-J., 2 vols.
(Macmillan, 1904).]

Like Burne-Jones he had gone up to Oxford intending to take Holy Orders
in the Church of England; but the last three years had taught him that
his interest lay elsewhere. The spirit of faith, of reverence, of love
for his fellow men still attracted him to Christianity; but he could not
subscribe to a body of doctrine or accept the authority of a single
Church. His ideal shifted gradually. At one time he hoped to found a
brotherhood which was to combine art with religion and to train
craftsmen for th