idicule him. Besides his exquisite taste, his severe love of
beauty, and his marvellous power of expressing the highest ideals of
pure form, he had one thing which linked him to all the other great men
whose lives we have here recounted--his steadfast and unconquerable
personal energy. In one sense it may be said that he was not a
practical man; and yet in another and higher sense, what could possibly
be more practical than this accomplished resolve of the poor Liverpool
stone-cutter to overcome all obstacles, to go to, Rome, and to make
himself into a great sculptor? It is indeed a pity that in writing for
Englishmen of the present day such a life should even seem for a moment
to stand in need of a practical apology. For purity, for
guilelessness, for exquisite appreciation of the true purpose of
sculpture as the highest embodiment of beauty of form, John Gibson's
art stands unsurpassed in all the annals of modern statuary.

IV.

WILLIAM HERSCHEL, BANDSMAN.

Old Isaac Herschel, the oboe-player of the King's Guard in Hanover, had
served with his regiment for many years in the chilly climate of North
Germany, and was left at last broken down in health and spirits by the
many hardships of several severe European campaigns. Isaac Herschel was
a man of tastes and education above his position; but he had married a
person in some respects quite unfitted for him. His good wife, Anna,
though an excellent housekeeper and an estimable woman in her way, had
never even learned to write; and when the pair finally settled down to
old age in Hanover, they were hampered by the cares of a large family
of ten children. Respectable poverty in Germany is even more pressing
than in England; the decent poor are accustomed to more frugal fare and
greater privations than with us; and the domestic life of the Herschel
family circle must needs have been of the most careful and penurious
description. Still, Isaac Herschel dearly loved his art, and in it he
found many amends and consolations for the sordid shifts and troubles
of a straitened German household. All his spare time was given to
music, and in his later days he was enabled to find sufficient pupils
to eke out his little income with comparative comfort.

William Herschel, the great astronomer (born in 1738), was the fourth
child of his mother, and with his brothers he was brought up at the
garrison school in Hanover, together with the sons of the other common
soldiers