Land’s End, in Cornwall, is notable from our present point of view because it possesses no fewer than three inns, or houses of public refreshment, each one claiming to be the “First and Last House in England.” The real original “First and Last” is the inn, so-called, that stands next to the grey, weatherbeaten granite church in the weatherbeaten and grey village of Sennen, one mile distant from the beetling cliffs of Land’s End itself; but in modern times, since touring has brought civilisation and excursion brakes and broken bottles and sandwich-papers to the old-time savage solitudes of this rocky coast, there have sprung up, almost on the verge of those cliffs, two other houses--an ugly “hotel” and a plain white-washed tea-house--that have cut in to share this peculiar fame. The tiny tea-house, where you get tea and picture-postcards, and are bothered to buy shells, and tin and copper-bearing quartz, is actually the most westerly, and therefore the “Last” or the “First,” according to whether you are setting out from Penzance, or returning. [Illustration: THE “FIRST AND LAST,” LAND’S END.] The “Eagle and Child,” a sign common in Cheshire and Lancashire, is heraldically described as “an eagle, wings extended or, preying on an infant in its cradle proper, swaddled gules, the cradle laced or.” The eagle is generally represented on inn-signs without the cradle. In the mere straightforward, unmystical language of every day, the eagle thus fantastically described is golden, the infant is naturally coloured, and the swaddling is red. The origin of this curious sign is found in the fourteenth-century legend which tells how Sir Thomas de Latham was walking in his park with his lady, who was childless, when they drew near to a desert and wild situation where it was commonly reported an eagle had built her nest. Approaching the spot, they heard the cries of a young child, and, on bursting through thickets and brambles, the attendant servants found a baby-boy, dressed in rich swaddling-clothes, in the eagle’s nest. The knight affected astonishment; the good dame, unsuspecting, or, like the Lady Mottisfont who, under somewhat similar circumstances, in one of Mr. Thomas Hardy’s _Group of Noble Dames_, thought strange things but said nothing, was wisely silent and accepted the “gift from Heaven.” As the old ballad has it: Their content was such to see the hap That th’ ancient lady hugs yt in her lap; Smooth’s yt with kisses, bathes yt in her teares, And unto Lathom House the babe she bears. Good lady! She soon learnt, in common with the countryside in general, that the foundling thus “miraculously” given her was the offspring of her husband and one Mary Oscatel; but the baby was adopted, was given the name of Latham, and succeeded eventually to the family estates. In after years, Isabel, daughter and sole heiress of this foundling, married Sir John Stanley, ancestor of the Stanleys, Earls of Derby, who still bear the “Eagle and Child” crest.