nature. All visitors to the great Exhibition of 1862 will remember his
beautiful tinted Venus, which occupied the place of honour in a light
temple erected for the purpose by another distinguished artistic
Welshman, Mr. Owen Jones, who did much towards raising the standard of
taste in the English people.

In January, 1866, John Gibson had a stroke of paralysis, from which he
never recovered. He died within the month, and was buried in the English
cemetery at Rome. Both his brothers had died before 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