29. Westminster and the Houses of Parliament 169 30. Hyde Park, London 176 31. Battleships Manoeuvring 193 32. Changing the Guard 200 [Illustration: THE CHALK CLIFFS OF ENGLAND--THE NEEDLES, ISLE OF WIGHT] ENGLAND CHAPTER I THE MAKING OF ENGLAND--THE BRITONS AND THE ROMANS When Europe, as it shows on the map to-day, was in the making, some great force of Nature cut the British Islands off from the mainland. Perhaps it was the result of a convulsive spasm as Mother Earth took a new wrinkle on her face. Perhaps it was the steady biting of the Gulf Stream eating away at chalk cliffs and shingle beds. Whatever the cause, as far back as man knows the English Channel ran between the mainland of Europe and "a group of islands off the coast of France"; and the chalk cliffs of the greatest of these islands faced the newcomer to suggest to the Romans the name of _Terra Alba_: perhaps to prompt in some admirer of Horace among them a prophetic fancy that this white land was to make a "white mark" in the Calendar of History. Considered geographically, the British Islands, taking the sum of the whole five thousand or so of them (counting islets), are of slight importance. Yet a map of the world showing the possessions of Great Britain--the area over which the people of these islands have spread their sway--shows a whole continent, large areas of three other continents, and numberless islands to be British. And when the astonishing disproportion between the British Islands and the British Empire has been grasped, it can be made the more astonishing by reducing the British Islands down to England as the actual centre from which all this greatness has radiated. It is true that the British Empire is the work of the British people: as the Roman Empire was of the Italian people and not of Rome alone. But it was in England that it had its foundation; and the English people made a start with the British Empire by subduing or coaxing to their domain the Welsh, the Scottish, and the Irish. Not to England all the glory: but certainly to England the first glory.