great power lay in the portraits she did in chalks.... Besides many
portraits of Newman himself ... she drew a portrait of old Mr.
Wilberforce...."

The portrait of Maria Rosina in this volume was painted by herself in the
spring of 1827, to send to her eldest brother, George Giberne (at Dhoolia,
Candeish), afterwards Judge in the Bombay Presidency (East India Co.). On
the back of it her brother had written in pencil:--

"Yes, here's a silent, thoughtful thing, and yet
Her soft blue eye beams Eloquence: her lips
Oh! who could teach his spirit to forget
Their deep expressiveness, that far eclipse
All that kind nature to this world hath given,
All we can see of Earth, or guess of Heaven."

[Illustration: MARIA ROSINA GIBERNE
FROM A PAINTING BY HERSELF]

At this time she had taken many portraits of her friends, and I have, in
my own possession, one of Miss Wigram, and one, in a riding-hat, of her
sister Emily, both done in chalks, as is her picture of herself sent to
her brother. Later on she went to Rome, where for twenty years she studied
art and copied pictures "for the use," Mr. Mozley says, "of English
chapels." Years after, when my aunt was in the convent of the Order of
Visitation at Autun, she wrote an interesting letter to Cardinal Newman,
which is given by Miss Anne Mozley in her _Letters and Correspondence of
John Henry Newman_ alluding to the old days when their friendship, which
had never wavered during all the years which had gone by, was but just
beginning:--