ot a foreigner; I'm a sculptor.'"

The consequence of this almost childish carelessness was that Gibson
had always to be accompanied on his long journeys either by a friend or
a courier. While Mr. Ben lived, he usually took his brother in charge
to some extent; and the relation between them was mutual, for while
John Gibson found the sculpture, Mr. Ben found the learning, so that
Gibson used often to call him "my classical dictionary." In 1847,
however, Mr. Ben was taken ill. He got a bad cold, and would have no
doctor, take no medicine. "I consider Mr. Ben," his brother writes,
"as one of the most amiable of human beings--too good for this
world--but he will take no care against colds, and when ill he is a
stubborn animal." That summer Gibson went again to England, and when,
he came back found Mr. Ben no better. For four years the younger
brother lingered on, and in 1851 died suddenly from the effects of a
fall in walking. Gibson was thus left quite alone, but for his pupil
Miss Hosmer, who became to him more than a daughter.

During his later years Gibson took largely to tinting his
statues--colouring them faintly with flesh-tones and other hues like
nature; and this practice he advocated with all the strength of his
single-minded nature. All visitors to the great Exhibition of 1862
will remember his beautiful tinted Venus, which occupied the place of
honour in a light temple erected for the purpose by another
distinguished artistic Welshman, Mr. Owen Jones, who did much towards
raising the standard of taste in the English people.

In January, 1866, John Gibson had a stroke of paralysis, from which he
never recovered. He died within the month, and was buried in the
English cemetery at Rome. Both his brothers had died before him; and
he left the whole of his considerable fortune to the Royal Academy in
England. An immense number of his works are in the possession of the
Academy, and are on view there throughout the year.

John Gibson's life is very different in many respects from that of most
other great working men whose story is told in this volume.
Undoubtedly, he was deficient in several of those rugged and stern
qualities to which English working men have oftenest owed their final
success. But there was in him a simple grandeur of character, a purity
of soul, and an earnestness of aim which raised him at once far above
the heads of most among those who would have been the readiest to laugh
at and r