To look briefly at the background of Morris, he spent several years with his family in Woodford Hall, a Palladian mansion in Epping Forest, where he could enjoy a rural idyll, and develop his love of nature, which were always to be felt in his art and approach to life. He also enjoyed reading the romantic historical novels of Sir Walter Scott, and when he started his studies at Oxford in 1853, he was strongly influenced by Carlyle’s Past and Present, Charlotte Yonge’s The Heir of Redclyffe (1853), and especially by Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice, which was published during the first year of his studies. (184) Through Ruskin’s writings Morris and his friend Burne-Jones, were also introduced to the Pre-Raphaelite movement. In 1854 and 1855, the two toured Belgium and northern France to study Flemish painting and Gothic architecture. Morris expressed himself as writer and poet, studying for example the folklore of Iceland; his main works were much appreciated by contemporaries, and Ruskin himself admired his poems. (162a) When Morris completed his university degree, he was already well instructed in mediaeval studies, and in 1856, he entered G.E. Streets office as an apprentice. Here he made friends with Philip Webb (1831-1915), Street’s chief assistant, who later became his close collaborator. However, architect’s work did not interest Morris, and so after a few months he let himself be pursuaded by D.G. Rossetti (1828-82) to leave the office and take up painting. Webb, who had made serious studies of English Gothic architecture, came to see that “modern medievalism was an open contradiction”; he left Street with the intention of trying to make buildings of the present day pleasant without pretences of style. (185)