him; and he left the whole of his considerable fortune to the Royal
Academy in England. An immense number of his works are in the
possession of the Academy, and are on view there throughout the
year.

John Gibson's life is very different in many respects from that of
most other great working men whose story is told in this volume.
Undoubtedly, he was deficient in several of those rugged and stern
qualities to which English working men have oftenest owed their
final success. But there was in him a simple grandeur of
character, a purity of soul, and an earnestness of aim which raised
him at once far above the heads of most among those who would have
been the readiest to laugh at and ridicule 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.