These books were for the home library; reference works were bought to be deposited in central libraries, along with objects of art and science.  It was not intended to keep the Guild property centralised; but rather to spread it, as its other work was spread, broad-cast.  A number of books and other objects were bought with the Guild money, and lent or given to various schools and colleges and institutions where work akin to the objects of the Guild was being done.  But for the time Ruskin fixed upon Sheffield as the place of his first Guild Museum—­being the home of the typical English industry—­central to all parts of England, near beautiful hill-country, and yet not far from a number of manufacturing towns in which, if St. George’s work went on, supporters and recruits might be found.

The people of Sheffield were already, in 1875, building a museum of their own, and naturally thought that the two might be conveniently worked together.  But that was not at all what Ruskin wished.  Not only was his museum to be primarily the storehouse of the Guild, rather than one among many means of popular education; but the objects which he intended to place there were not such as the public expected to see.  He had no interest in a vast accumulation of articles of all kinds.  He wanted to provide for his friends’ common treasury a few definitely valuable and interesting examples—­interesting to the sort of people that he hoped would join the Guild or be bred up in it; and valuable according to his own standard and experience.

In September 1875, Ruskin stayed a couple of days at Sheffield to inspect a cottage at Walkley, in the outskirts of the town, and to make arrangements for founding the museum—­humbly to begin with, but hoping for speedy increase.  He engaged as curator, at a salary of L40 a year and free lodging on the premises, his former pupil at the Working Men’s College, Henry Swan, who had done occasional work for him in drawing and engraving.  Swan was a Quaker, and a remarkable man in his way; enthusiastic in his new vocation, and interested in the social questions which were being discussed in “Fors.”  Under his care the Museum remained at Walkley, accumulating material in the tiny and hardly accessible cottage—­being so to speak in embryo, until the way should be clear for its removal or enlargement, which took place in 1890.

When Ruskin came back on his posting tour of April 1876, he stayed again at Sheffield, to meet a few friends of Swan’s—­Secularists, Unitarians, and Quakers, who professed Communism.  They had an interview (reported in the Sheffield Daily Telegraph, April 28th, 1876), which brought out rather curiously the points of difference between their opinions and his.  They refused to join the Guild because they would not promise obedience, and help in its objects.  Ruskin, however, was willing to advance theirs.  A few weeks afterwards he invited them to choose a piece of ground for their Communist experiment.  They chose a farm of over thirteen acres at Abbeydale, which the Guild bought in 1877 at a cost of L2,287 16s.6d. for their use—­the communists agreeing to pay the money back in instalments, without interest, by the end of seven years:  when the farm should be their own.