Serene, sedate Flaxman, who adored the antique, who held that sculpture should be nothing if not calm and classical, was little likely to sympathize with Roubiliac, or to comprehend his close following of Bernini, or indeed to care at all for his productions. 'His thoughts are conceits; his compositions epigrams,' says Flaxman. And then he is astounded that Roubiliac, who, at the ripe age of fifty, accompanied by Hudson the painter, also arrived at a period of life somewhat advanced for study, visited Italy, should presume to return unmoved and unenlightened by what he had seen. 'He was absent from home three months, going and returning,' relates Flaxman, with an air of indignation; 'stayed three days in Rome, and laughed at the sublime remains of ancient sculpture!' Positively laughed! To Flaxman, who was certainly a bigot in regard to the beauties of the antique, if Roubiliac was something of a scoffer in that respect, this seemed flat blasphemy. Yet it was hardly to be expected that Roubiliac, at the height of a successful career, would admit his whole system of art to have been founded on error--would consent humbly to recommence his profession, and forthwith prostrate himself at the feet of ancient sculpture. His admiration for Bernini--whom of course Flaxman cordially detested--was genuine enough. The Italian's florid manner chimed in with his own French, gesticulating, mercurial notions of art. If excess of self-satisfaction prevented him from rendering due homage to the relics of the past--and possibly his early toils as a 'restorer' further tended to blind him to their value--he was careful to pay tribute to the merits of the artist he had selected for his prototype. Hazlitt mentions, on the authority of Northcote, that when Roubiliac, returned from Rome, went to look at his own works in Westminster Abbey, he cried out in his usual vehement way, 'By God! they look like tobacco-pipes compared to Bernini!' And he was not without honest admiration for the production of other artists more nearly of his own time. Whenever he visited the city he was careful to go round by the gates of Bethlehem Hospital, in Moorfields, over which stood Caius Gabriel Cibber's figures of Raving and Melancholy Madness: Colley Cibber's '_brazen_, brainless brothers,' as Pope called them, ignorant, possibly from their having become so begrimed with London smoke, that they were really carved in stone. Roubiliac highly esteemed these statues. Though in idea evidently borrowed from Michael Angelo, they were yet strictly realistic in treatment, and were reputed to be modelled from Oliver Cromwell's giant porter, at one time a patient in the Hospital. When Bethlehem was removed to St. George's Fields the surface of these figures was renovated by Bacon, the sculptor. They are now deposited in the South Kensington Museum.