Those clergymen who owed their promotion to the testimonials thus obtained might say with Job Orton's pious fervour, "Blessed be God for shorthand." Reminiscences of our Village Church. BY THE REV. CANON BENHAM, B.D., F.S.A. I propose in the following notes to write my recollections of a village church. They extend over nearly sixty years, and will, no doubt, describe a growth and change which might have been observed in a thousand English churches. But first, let me say a few words of this church before my recollection of it; not long before, for I am indebted to my mother's reminiscences for the few trifles with which I open. It was a heavy looking edifice, not attractive to the eye as compared with the "storied windows, richly dight," which mark the churches of the beautiful Gothic revival of our own times. This was a plain building, flint, with queer old stone facings, a heavy tower, "churchwarden" windows with diamond panes, with not an atom of beautiful tracery from one end to the other. And yet that church, if you had been taught how to look for it, contained features of the deepest interest to an antiquary. Within, were heavy Norman pillars between nave and aisles, and a round-headed flattened chancel arch, unmistakably Saxon. For that church was built by S. Wilfred of York in the 8th century, and built so substantially, that there it was in the 19th century, sturdy and strong, though successive generations had bepewed it and begalleried it, and put in square ugly windows, and a three-decker, in fact, had used their utmost endeavours to disfigure it. They could not destroy the simple Norman capitals, but they had whitewashed them, and had written up, with the best intentions, texts on the walls, in which my youthful eyes discovered two or three blunders in spelling. It is no wonder that the old Rector, who liked to see everything graceful and artistic, but who had never learned the principles of Architecture scientifically, failed to appreciate S. Wilfred's ancient work, and yearned to see something more graceful in its place. But of that presently. Let me go back for eighty years. The incumbent in those days was an old foxhunter, very fat and of enormous appetite. One day he came in from a long run across country. "Wilthon," said he (he used to lisp) "What ith there for my dinner?" "A goose, sir," said Wilson. "Bring him up, Wilthon, I'll goothe him." And he finished the goose and picked every bone clean. A well-known politician, who died only recently, was born in the village, and the old rector was called on to baptize him. "Name thith child," said he, and the answer was duly given, "James Edwin Thorold." The rector stared, for such exuberance of nomenclature was very uncommon in those days. "What?" he said in amazement. The name was repeated. "Bleth my thoul, what a lot of nameth," said he, "thay it onthe more." The name was said a third time, and the baby was duly christened. A lady who witnessed