March 14th.--On Friday evening I dined at Mr. T. B. Read's, the poet and
artist, with a party composed of painters and sculptors,--the only
exceptions being the American banker and an American tourist who has
given Mr. Read a commission. Next to me at table sat Mr. Gibson, the
English sculptor, who, I suppose, stands foremost in his profession at
this day. He must be quite an old man now, for it was whispered about
the table that he is known to have been in Rome forty-two years ago, and
he himself spoke to me of spending thirty-seven years here, before he
once returned home. I should hardly take him to be sixty, however,
his hair being more dark than gray, his forehead unwrinkled, his
features unwithered, his eye undimmed, though his beard is somewhat
venerable. . . . .

He has a quiet, self-contained aspect, and, being a bachelor, has
doubtless spent a calm life among his clay and marble, meddling little
with the world, and entangling himself with no cares beyond his studio.
He did not talk a great deal; but enough to show that he is still an
Englishman in many sturdy traits, though his accent has something foreign
about it. His conversation was chiefly about India, and other topics of
the day, together with a few reminiscences of people in Liverpool, where
he once resided. There was a kind of simplicity both in his manner and
matter, and nothing very remarkable in the latter. . . . .

The gist of what he said (upon art) was condemnatory of the
Pre-Raphaelite modern school of painters, of whom he seemed to spare
none, and of their works nothing; though he allowed that the old
Pre-Raphaelites had some exquisite merits, which the moderns entirely
omit in their imitations. In his own art, he said the aim should be to
find out the principles on which the Greek sculptors wrought, and to do
the work of this day on those principles and in their spirit; a fair