attempt, and also with a clever head of Mercury in marble, which
Gibson carved in his spare moments.

The more the lad saw of clay and marble, the greater grew his
distaste for mere woodwork. At last, he determined to ask Mr.
Francis to buy out his indentures from the cabinet-makers, and let
him finish his apprenticeship as a sculptor. But unfortunately the
cabinet-makers found Gibson too useful a person to be got rid of so
easily: they said he was the most industrious lad they had ever
had; and so his very virtues seemed as it were to turn against him.
Not so, really: Mr. Francis thought so well of the boy that he
offered the masters 70 pounds to be quit of their bargain; and in
the end, Gibson himself having made a very firm stand in the
matter, he was released from his indentures and handed over finally
to Mr. Francis and a sculptor's life.

And now the eager boy was at last "truly happy." He had to model
all day long, and he worked away at it with a will. Shortly after
he went to Mr. Francis's yard, a visitor came upon business, a
magnificent-looking old man, with snowy hair and Roman features.
It was William Roscoe, the great Liverpool banker, himself a poor
boy who had risen, and who had found time not only to build up for
himself an enormous fortune, but also to become thoroughly well
acquainted with literature and art by the way. Mr. Roscoe had
written biographies of Lorenzo de Medici, the great Florentine, and
of Leo X., the art-loving pope; and throughout his whole life he
was always deeply interested in painting and sculpture and
everything that related to them. He was a philanthropist, too, who
had borne his part bravely in the great struggle for the abolition
of the slave trade; and to befriend a struggling lad of genius like