m, he found Canova in his studio, surrounded
by his numerous scholars and admirers. The Liverpool stone-cutter had
brought a few of his drawings with him, and Canova examined them with
great attention. Instinctively he recognized the touch of genius.
When he had looked at them keenly for a few minutes, he turned kindly
to the trembling young man, and said at once, "Come to me alone next
week, for I want to have a talk with you."

On the appointed day, Gibson, quivering with excitement; presented
himself once more at the great master's studio. Canova was surrounded
as before by artists and visitors; but in a short time he took Gibson
into a room by himself, and began to speak with him in his very broken
English. Many artists came to Rome, he said, with very small means,
and that perhaps might be Gibson's case. "Let me have the
gratification, then," he went on, "of assisting you to prosecute your
studies. I am rich. I am anxious to be of use to you. Let me forward
you in your art as long as you stay in Rome."

Gibson replied, with many stammerings, that he hoped his slender means
would suffice for his personal needs, but that if Canova would only
condescend to give him instruction, to make him his pupil, to let him
model in his studio, he would be eternally grateful. Canova was one of
the most noble and lovable of men. He acceded at once to Gibson's
request, and Gibson never forgot his kind and fatherly assistance.
"Dear generous master," the Welsh sculptor wrote many years after, when
Canova had long passed away, "I see you before me now. I hear your
soft Venetian dialect, and your kindly words inspiring my efforts and
gently correcting my defects. My heart still swells with grateful
recollection of you."

Canova told his new pupil to devote a few days first to seeing the
sights of Rome; but Gibson was impatient to begin at once. "I shall be
at your studio to-morrow morning," the ardent Welshman said; and he
kept his word. Canova, pleased with so much earnestness and
promptitude, set him to work forthwith upon a clay model from his own
statue of the Pugilist. Gibson went to the task with a will, moulding
the clay as best he could into shape; but he still knew so little of
the technical ways of regular sculptors that he tried to model this
work from the clay alone, though its pose was such that it could not
possibly hold together without an iron framework. Canova saw his error
and smiled, but let him go