'What do you see?' he asked.
'A perpendicular rock, going right down into the blue waters,' I answered.
'Look at it: what is the outline of it like? Whose face is it?'
'Shakspere's, by all that is grand!' I cried.
'So it is,' said Andrew.
'Right. Now I'll tell you what I would do. If I were very rich, and there were no poor people in the country, I would give a commission to some great sculptor to attack that rock and work out its suggestion. Then, if I had any money left, we should find one for Bacon, and one for Chaucer, and one for Milton; and, as we are about it, we may fancy as many more as we like; so that from the bounding rocks of our island, the memorial faces of our great brothers should look abroad over the seas into the infinite sky beyond.'
'Well, now,' said the elder, 'I think it is grander as it is.'
'You are quite right, father,' said Robert. 'And so with many of our fancies for perfecting God's mighty sketches, which he only can finish.'
Again we seated ourselves and looked out over the waves.
'I have never yet heard,' I said, 'how you managed with that poor girl that wanted to drown herself—on Westminster Bridge, I mean—that night, you remember.'