of the
great ships that lie at anchor there, which bring stores of goods from
all parts of the world. He told him of the King's palace and the Queen's
palace, of the park and the canal, with the stately swans that are seen
swimming on it.

Nor did he forget to describe Saint Paul's Church, with its fine choir,
its lofty dome and cupola, and its curious whispering gallery, where a
whisper breathed to the wall on one side is carried round by the echo,
and the words are heard distinctly on the opposite side of the gallery.
He spoke also of Westminster Abbey, that fine old Gothic building which
contains a great number of monuments, erected there to keep alive the
remembrance of the actions of great and wise men.

He told James likewise of the Tower of London, which is always guarded
by soldiers, and in one part of which he had seen lions, tigers, a wolf,
a spotted panther, a white Greenland bear, and other wild beasts, with
many sorts of monkeys.[4]

Thomas Brown talked very fast on these subjects, and as James, who had
never seen anything of the kind, was quite silent, and seemed as much
surprised as pleased with all that he heard, Thomas began to think his
cousin was but a dull, stupid sort of boy. But the next morning, when
they went out into the fields, he found that James had as much
knowledge as himself, though not of the same kind. Thomas knew not wheat
from barley, nor oats from rye; nor did he know the oak tree from the
elm, nor the ash from the willow. He had heard that bread was made from
corn, but he had never seen it threshed in a barn from the stalks, nor
had he ever seen a mill grinding it into flour. He knew nothing of the
manner of making and baking bread, of brewing malt and hops into beer,
or of the churning of butter. Nor did he even know that the skins of
cows, calves, bulls, horses, sheep, and goats were made into leather.

James Brown perfectly knew these, and many other things of the same
nature, and he willingly taught his cousin to understand some of the
arts that belong to the practice of husbandry.

These friendly and observing boys, after this time, met always once a
year, and they were eager in their separate stations to acquire
knowledge, that they might impart it to each other at the end of the
twelvemonth. So that Thomas, while living in a crowded city, gained a
knowledge of farming and all that relates to a country life; and James,
though dwelling a hundred miles from London, knew all