cherished a most filial regard.  “May I not be proud,” he writes long after, “to have known such men, to have conversed with them, watched all their proceedings, heard all their great sentiments on art?  Is it not a pleasure to be so deeply in their debt for instruction?” And now the flood of visitors who used to flock to Canova’s studio began to transfer their interest to Gibson’s.  Commission after commission was offered him, and he began to make money faster than he could use it.  His life had always been simple and frugal—­the life of a working man with high aims and grand ideals:  he hardly knew now how to alter it.  People who did not understand Gibson used to say in his later days that he loved money, because he made much and spent little.  Those who knew him better say rather that he worked much for the love of art, and couldn’t find much to do with his money when he had earned it.  He was singularly indifferent to gain; he cared not what he eat or drank; he spent little on clothes, and nothing on entertainments; but he paid his workmen liberally or even lavishly; he allowed one of his brothers more than he ever spent upon himself, and he treated the other with uniform kindness and generosity.  The fact is, Gibson didn’t understand money, and when it poured in upon him in large sums, he simply left it in the hands of friends, who paid him a very small percentage on it, and whom he always regarded as being very kind to take care of the troublesome stuff on his account.  In matters of art, Gibson was a great master; in matters of business, he was hardly more than a simple-minded child.

Sometimes queer incidents occurred at Gibson’s studio from the curious ignorance of our countrymen generally on the subject of art.  One day, a distinguished and wealthy Welsh gentleman called on the sculptor, and said that, as a fellow Welshman, he was anxious to give him a commission.  As he spoke, he cast an admiring eye on Gibson’s group of Psyche borne by the Winds.  Gibson was pleased with his admiration, but rather taken aback when the old gentleman said blandly, “If you were to take away the Psyche and put a dial in the place, it’d make a capital design for a clock.”  Much later, the first Duke of Wellington called upon him at Rome and ordered a statue of Pandora, in an attitude which he described.  Gibson at once saw that the Duke’s idea was a bad one, and told him so.  By-and-by, on a visit to England, Gibson waited on the duke, and submitted photographs of the work he had modelled.  “But, Mr. Gibson,” said the old soldier, looking at them curiously, “you haven’t followed my idea.”  “No,” answered the sculptor, “I have followed my own.”  “You are very stubborn,” said Wellington.  “Duke,” answered the sturdy sculptor, “I am a Welshman, and all the world knows that we are a stubborn race.”  The Iron Duke ought to have been delighted to find another man as unbending as himself, but he wasn’t; and in the end he refused the figure, which Gibson sold instead to Lady Marian Alford.