practical ingenuity.

John Gibson, sculptor, of Rome, as he loved to call himself, was
a remarkable embodiment, in many ways, of this self-respecting,
artistic, ideal Welsh peasant temperament. In a little village
near Conway, in North Wales, there lived at the end of the last
century a petty labouring market gardener of the name of Gibson,
who knew and spoke no other tongue than his native Welsh. In 1790,
his wife gave birth to a son whom they christened John, and who
grew up, a workman's child, under the shadow of the great castle,
and among the exquisite scenery of the placid land-locked Conway
river. John Gibson's parents, like the mass of labouring Welsh
people, were honest, God-fearing folk, with a great earnestness of
principle, a profound love of truth, and a hatred of all mean or
dirty actions. They brought up the boy in these respects in the
way he should go; and when he was old he indeed did not depart from
them. Throughout his life, John Gibson was remarkable for his
calm, earnest, straightforward simplicity, a simplicity which
seemed almost childish to those who could not understand so grand
and uncommon and noble a nature as his.

From his babyhood, almost, the love of art was innate in the boy;
and when he was only seven years old, he began to draw upon a slate
a scene that particularly pleased him--a line of geese sailing upon
the smooth glassy surface of a neighbouring pond. He drew them as
an ordinary child almost always does draw--one goose after another,
in profile, as though they were in procession, without any attempt
at grouping or perspective in any way. His mother praised the
first attempt, saying to him in Welsh, "Indeed, Jack, this is very
like the geese;" and Jack, encouraged by her praise, decided