Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/612

ÆT. 54] speech which he delivered over the grave. The other speakers—Mr. Tims of Battersea, Mr. Dowling of the Irish National League, Mr. Quelch of the Social Democratic Federation—had improved the occasion with obvious sincerity, but in phrases that were rapidly becoming mere commonplaces of journalism and losing any definite meaning: protesting against what they described as the autocracy of the police, speaking of hired murderers in uniform, and a ruling class trembling in its shoes. Morris's words, spoken to a crowd fast melting away in the darkness and rain, tried to recall the larger and nobler issue. "Our friend who lies here has had a hard life, and met with a hard death; and if society had been differently constituted, his life might have been a delightful, a beautiful, and a happy one. It is our business to begin to organize for the purpose of seeing that such things shall not happen; to try and make this earth a beautiful and happy place."

"The scene at the grave," he writes a few days afterwards, "was the strangest sight I have ever seen, I think. It was most impressive to witness; there was to me something aweful (I can use no other word) in such a tremendous mass of people, unorganized, unhelped, and so harmless and good-tempered."

This feeling of pity for the helplessness of the masses had throughout stood alongside of his indignation at the practical barbarism of the commercial system as the dominant force in his mind. When he saw the multitudes—if we may recall in so different a context the august words of the Evangelist —he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd. The direct result of all his efforts to bring them together and lead them on was indeed little