. For the gold medal he executed a
group which he called Mercy interceding for the Vanquished. For the
silver medal he offered a bust of a living person. He had the singular
good fortune of winning both, and he received them in public from the
hands of the President of the Academy, Sir Charles Eastlake. Cheer upon
cheer greeted the modest student when he rose and went forward for the
purpose. He was a young man of great self-control. Instead of joining in
the usual festivities of his fellow-students after the award, he walked
quietly to his lodgings, where his father and brother were anxiously
waiting to hear the result of the competition. He threw himself into a
chair without a word, and they began to console him for the supposed
disappointment. In a few minutes they sat down to supper; whereupon,
with a knowing smile, he took his medals out of his pocket, and laid one
of them on each side of his plate.

From this time he had no difficulties except those inherent in the
nature of his work, and in his own constitution. His early struggle with
life had made him too intense. He had scarcely known what play was, and
he did not know how to recreate himself. He had little taste for reading
or society. He loved art alone. The consequence was that he worked with
an intensity and continuity that no human constitution could long
endure. Soon after winning his two medals his health was so completely
prostrated that he made a voyage to Australia to visit a brother who had
settled there. The voyage restored him, and he soon resumed the practice
of his art at Melbourne. The people were just building their Houses of
Parliament, and he was employed to execute the artistic work of the
interior. He lived many years in Australia, and filled the colony with
his works in marble and bronze.

In due time he made the tour of Europe, and lingered nine years in Rome,
where he labored with suicidal assiduity. He did far more manual labor
himself than is usual with artists of his standing, and yet, during his
residence in Rome he had twenty men in his service. It was in Rome, in
1876, that he received from Melbourne the commission to execute in
marble the four colossal statues mentioned above. These works he
completed in something less than eighteen months, besides doing several
other minor works previously ordered.

It was too much, and Nature resented the affront. After he had packed
the statues, and sent them on their way to the other side o