We soon arrived at Abingdon, and were delighted with the view of the town, with its church spire overlooking it as we approached to the side of the Thames, which now appeared as a good-sized river.  As we stopped a minute or two on the bridge, my brother got a distant view of some pleasure boats, and suggested we should stay there for the rest of the day, to explore the town, and row up and down the river!  He had evidently fallen in love with Abingdon, but I reminded him that our travelling orders were not to ride in any kind of conveyance during the whole of our journey, and that, if we got drowned, we should never get to the Land’s End, “besides,” I added, “we have not had our breakfast.”  This finished him off altogether, and the pleasure-boat scheme vanished immediately we entered the portals of a fine old hostelry, where the smell of bacon and eggs recalled him from his day dreams.  We handed our luggage to the boots to take care of, and walked into the coffee-room, where to our surprise we found breakfast set for two, and the waitress standing beside it.  When we told her how glad we were to find she had anticipated our arrival, she said that the bacon and eggs on the table were not prepared for us, but for two other visitors who had not come downstairs at the appointed time.  She seemed rather vexed, as the breakfast was getting cold, and said we had better sit down to it, and she would order another lot to be got ready and run the risk.  So we began operations at once, but felt rather guilty on the appearance of a lady and gentleman when very little of the bacon and eggs intended for them remained.  The waitress had, however, relieved the situation by setting some empty crockery on another table.  Having satisfied our requirements, we tipped the waitress handsomely while paying the bill, and vanished to explore the town.  We were captivated with the appearance of Abingdon, which had quite a different look from many of the towns we had visited elsewhere; but perhaps our good opinion had been enhanced by the substantial breakfast we had disposed of, and the splendid appetites which enabled us to enjoy it.  There were other good old-fashioned inns in the town, and a man named William Honey had at one time been the landlord of one of the smaller ones, where he had adopted as his sign a bee-hive, on which he had left the following record: 

  Within this Hive we’re all alive,
    Good Liquor makes us funny;
  If you are dry, step in and try
    The flavour of our Honey.

The early history of Abingdon-on-Thames appeared, like others, to have begun with that of a lady who built a nunnery.  Cilia was the name of this particular lady, and afterwards Hean, her brother, built a monastery, or an abbey, the most substantial remains of which appeared to be the abbey gateway; but as the abbey had existed in one form or another from the year 675 down to the time of Henry VIII, when it was dissolved, in 1538, Abingdon must have been a place of considerable