And Ruskin worked with us in the
mist and rain and mud of an Oxford winter, and our friends and our
enemies came out and mocked us from the bank. We did not mind it
much then, and we did not mind it afterwards at all, but worked
away for two months at our road. And what became of the road?
Well, like a bad lecture it ended abruptly - in the middle of the
swamp. Ruskin going away to Venice, when we came back for the next
term there was no leader, and the 'diggers,' as they called us,
fell asunder. And I felt that if there was enough spirit amongst
the young men to go out to such work as road-making for the sake of
a noble ideal of life, I could from them create an artistic
movement that might change, as it has changed, the face of England.
So I sought them out - leader they would call me - but there was no
leader: we were all searchers only and we were bound to each other
by noble friendship and by noble art. There was none of us idle:
poets most of us, so ambitious were we: painters some of us, or
workers in metal or modellers, determined that we would try and
create for ourselves beautiful work: for the handicraftsman
beautiful work, for those who love us poems and pictures, for those
who love us not epigrams and paradoxes and scorn.
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