s idea was a bad one,
and told him so. By-and-by, on a visit to England, Gibson waited on
the duke, and submitted photographs of the work he had modelled. "But,
Mr. Gibson," said the old soldier, looking at them curiously, "you
haven't followed my idea." "No," answered the sculptor, "I have
followed MY OWN." "You are very stubborn," said Wellington. "Duke,"
answered the sturdy sculptor, "I am a Welshman, and all the world knows
that we are a stubborn race." The Iron Duke ought to have been
delighted to find another man as unbending as himself, but he wasn't;
and in the end he refused the figure, which Gibson sold instead to Lady
Marian Alford.

For twenty-seven years Gibson remained at Rome, working assiduously at
his art, and rising gradually but surely to the very first place among
then living sculptors. His studio now became the great centre of all
fashionable visitors to Rome. Still, he made no effort to get rich,
though he got rich without wishing it; he worked on merely for art's
sake, not for money. He would not do as many sculptors do, keep
several copies in marble of his more popular statues for sale; he
preferred to devote all his time to new works. "Gibson was always
absorbed in one subject," says Lady Eastlake, "and that was the
particular work or part of a work--were it but the turn of a corner of
drapery--which was then under his modelling hands. Time was nothing to
him; he was long and fastidious." His favourite pupil, Miss Hosmer,
once expressed regret to him that she had been so long about a piece of
work on which she was engaged. "Always try to do the best you can,"
Gibson answered. "Never mind how long you are upon a work--no. No one
will ask how long you have been, except fools. You don't care what
fools think."

During his long life at Rome, he was much cheered by the presence and
assistance of his younger brother, Mr. Ben, as he always called him,
who was also a sculptor, though of far less merit than John Gibson
himself. Mr. Ben came to Rome younger than John, and he learned to be
a great classical scholar, and to read those Greek and Latin books
which John only knew at second hand, but from whose beautiful fanciful
stories of gods and heroes he derived all the subjects for his works of
statuary. His other brother, Solomon, a strange, wild, odd man, in
whom the family genius had degenerated into mere eccentricity, never
did anything for his own livelihood, but lived always upon