Finally, we enter one of the chief stations of London, whence the trains start, not only at morning and evening, in and out between the centre and the suburbs, but also on longer journeys past the green farms and busy factories of Britain to the coasts which everywhere surround it. London is only the heart and the brain of the Empire; it could not stand alone, for there is no food grown in it. London is great only because Britain is a productive country and the British Empire is great. Therefore, when we have rested after our sight-seeing in the metropolis, we will go out to the green fields and the smaller towns, and will see what England and Scotland and Ireland are like, for from them have come the men who have made both London and the Empire. LECTURE III. THE SCENERY OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. [Sidenote: 1. Physical Map of British Isles.] At the close of the last Lecture we found ourselves in one of the chief railway stations of London, from which the railways go out through the open country--twenty different lines in twenty different directions--to end on the coasts around the island of Great Britain. We might, of course, take a train from one of these stations and travel rapidly through the country; but I prefer that you should go another way, by which you will see more. Here, in this map, we have the English Channel, up which our steamer brought us from India. We see the promontory of Kent round which we came; we note the Straits of Dover across which the Indian mails are carried; and we see the Thames, up which we passed into the midst of the great city--to the Tower Bridge and London Bridge. I now propose taking you up the River Thames beyond London. We will travel up the river almost to its source here in the Cotswold Hills, and we will look from the brink of the hills westward over the country beyond. This will give us a very good idea of the rolling, fertile plain which occupies all the South of England. Then returning to the east again we will follow the coast round from the Fens to Kent, and to the promontory of Cornwall. The rest of Britain may best be seen in two strips. The first begins here in Cornwall and Devonshire, and extends northward through Wales and the Lake District into the east of Scotland. It is mountainous, and has many beautiful wooded landscapes. The second begins in the South and West of Ireland, and extends up the West of Scotland. This also is mountainous, but it is on the edge of the stormy ocean, and is mostly naked and without trees, but has magnificent cliff scenery. [Sidenote: 2. Thames Steamboat on Bank Holiday.]