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 immediately to try again. But not being an
ordinary child, he determined this time to do better; he drew the geese
one behind the other as one generally sees them in actual nature. His
mother then asked him to draw a horse; and "after gazing long and often
upon one," he says, "I at last ventured to commit him to the slate."
When he had done so, the good mother was even more delighted. So, to try
his childish art, she asked him to put a rider on the horse's back. Jack
went out once more, "carefully watched men on horseback," and then
returning, made his sketch accordingly. In this childish reminiscence
one can see already the first workings of that spirit which made Gibson
afterwards into the greatest sculptor of all Europe. He didn't try even