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 John Gibson
was the very thing that was nearest and dearest to his benevolent heart.
Mr. Francis showed Roscoe the boy's drawings and models; and Roscoe's
appreciative eye saw in them at once the visible promise of great things
to be. He had come to order a chimney-piece for his library at Allerton,
where his important historical works were all composed; and he
determined that the clever boy should have a chief hand in its
production. A few days later he returned again with a valuable old
Italian print. "I want you to make a bas-relief in baked clay," he said
to Gibson, "from this print for the centre of my mantelpiece." Gibson
was overjoyed. The print was taken from a fresco of Raphael's in the
Vatican at Rome, and Gibson's work was to reproduce it in clay in low
relief, as a sculpture picture. He did so entirely to his new patron's
satisfaction, and this his first serious work is now duly preserved in
the Liverpool Institution which Mr. Roscoe had been mainly instrumental
in founding.

Roscoe had a splendid collection of prints and drawings at Allerton; and
he invited the clever Welsh lad over there frequently, and allowed him
to study them all to his heart's content. To a lad like John Gibson,
such an opportunity of becoming acquainted with the works of Raphael and