the works of John Ruskin confirmed them in the admiration which they
already felt for the life and art of the Middle Ages. In the summer
vacation of 1855 the two friends went to Northern France to see the
beautiful towns and splendid churches with which that country had been
filled between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries; and there
they made up their minds that they cared for art more than for
anything else, such as wealth or ease or the opinion of the world,
and that as soon as they left Oxford they would become artists.
By art they meant the making of beauty for the adornment and
enrichment of human life, and as artists they meant to strive against
all that was ugly or mean or untruthful in the life of their own time.

Art, as they understood it, is one single thing covering the whole
of life but practised in many special forms that differ one from
another. Among these many forms of art there are two of principal
importance. One of the two is the art which is concerned with the
making and adorning of the houses in which men and women live; that is
to say, architecture, with all its attendant arts of decoration,
including sculpture, painting, the designing and ornamenting of
metal, wood and glass, carpets, paper-hangings, woven, dyed and
embroidered cloths of all kinds, and all the furniture which a house
may have for use or pleasure. The other is the art which is concerned
with the making and adorning of stories in prose and verse. Both of
these kinds of art were practised by Morris throughout his life. The
former was his principal occupation; he made his living by it, and
built up in it a business which alone made him famous, and which has
had a great influence towards bringing more beauty into daily domestic
life in England and in other countries also. His profession was thus
that of a manufacturer, designer, and decorator. When he had to
describe himself by a single word, he called himself a designer. But
it is the latter branch of his art which principally concerns us now,
the art of a maker and adorner of stories. He became famous in this
kind of art also, both in prose and verse, as a romance-writer and a
poet. But he spoke of it as play rather than work, and although he
spent much time and great pains on it, he regarded it as relaxation
from the harder and more constant work of his life, which was carrying
on the business of designing, painting, weaving, dyeing, printing and
other occupations of that