His Liverpool friends, now thoroughly proud of their stone-cutter,
insisted upon giving him a public banquet. Glasgow followed the
same example; and the simple-minded sculptor, unaccustomed to such
honours, hardly knew how to bear his blushes decorously upon him.
During this visit, he received a command to execute a statue of the
queen. Gibson was at first quite disconcerted at such an awful
summons. "I don't know how to behave to queens," he said. "Treat
her like a lady," said a friend; and Gibson, following the advice,
found it sufficiently answered all the necessities of the
situation. But when he went to arrange with the Prince Consort
about the statue, he was rather puzzled what he should do about
measuring the face, which he always did for portrait sculpture with
a pair of compasses. All these difficulties were at last smoothed
over; and Gibson was also permitted to drape the queen's statue in
Greek costume, for in his artistic conscientiousness he absolutely
refused to degrade sculpture by representing women in the
fashionable gown of the day, or men in swallow-tail coats and high
collars.

Another work which Gibson designed during this visit possesses for
us a singular and exceptional interest. It was a statue of George
Stephenson, to be erected at Liverpool. Thus, by a curious
coincidence, the Liverpool stone-cutter was set to immortalize the
features and figure of the Killingworth engine-man. Did those two
great men, as they sat together in one room, sculptor and sitter,
know one another's early history and strange struggles, we wonder?
Perhaps not; but if they did, it must surely have made a bond of
union between them. At any rate, Gibson greatly admired
Stephenson, just as he had admired the Stelvio road. "I will
endeavour to give him a look capable of action and energy," he