The Sonning Magazine.

Whilst wishing all the readers of the Sonning Magazine, and the Magazine itself, upon its second birthday, a happy new year, a word of explanation is necessary. Our design in starting the Magazine was threefold. First, to supply interesting reading of a general character at the lowest possible cost. Secondly, to keep a record of all events connected with the Church and Parish. Thirdly, to contain from time to time notices of the past history and antiquities of Sonning. This promise has been, we think, more than fulfilled, and on the other hand, the success of the Magazine has answered our best expectations. The list of subscribers has steadily increased through the year, and, as we have reason to believe that in some parts of the parish the Magazine is only now beginning to be known, we may hope to have by and by a still larger sale. Of the advantages as well as of the interest of a parochial record of this kind we have already spoken, and our experience during the past year has only added strength to the opinion we expressed. On one point however we were mistaken. The expense of the Magazine has proved far greater than we reckoned upon. In spite of many most kind and handsome donations, the receipts for the whole year have fallen alarmingly short of the expenditure, and some alteration in our former plan has been imperative. In assuming our present somewhat humble dimensions we believe that we shall be able to give every information that could be wished for about the history past and present of the parish, and that therefore our readers will lose nothing of that which gives the chief interest and value to the Sonning Magazine. We still hope those who are able will kindly add a donation to their regular subscription, as the Magazine will still continue to be sold at less than its cost price.

Church Services.

SONNING, SUNDAYS:-11 o'clock in the morning.

Half-past 3 o'clock in the afternoon. ALL SAINTS', SUNDAYS:-II o'clock in the morning.

On Thursday Evening, December 16th, a reading was given in the Boys' School-room, Sonning, by Mr. J. A. Hallett, who had kindly consented to come down from London for the purpose. Mr. Hallett read "the Christmas Carol" one of the most popular of Charles Dickens' shorter stories. Certainly no author could have had fuller justice done to him. It was difficult to say whether Mr. Hallett's rendering of the burlesque, or the pathetic parts, was most admirable; he seemed equally to command the tears and the laughter of his audience. Indeed it was the most perfect reading we have ever had the pleasure of listening to. Notwithstanding the extreme inclemency of the weather the room was well filled and very many have expressed their disappointment at being prevented from coming, to what from a former experience they knew would be a great and rare pleasure. The Hon. and Rev. F. G. Dutton thanked Mr. Hallett in the name of the company in a neat and appropriate speech.

IMPRESSIONS OF SONNING, &c. (II.)

Some months ago we received the following paper from our anonymous contributor, we have been unable to give it a place earlier on.

"In a former number of this Magazine I spoke of the advantages the people of Sonning possessed, and what I had observed as being a few of the results of those advantages, and I said I would at a future time tell you some of the memories of my youth, and how differently the people I lived among then fared, as regarded religious teaching and influence, to what you do.

When my father and mother went in the early years of their married life, to live at the place where I was born, the property had only recently been bought by my grandfather. The former possessor was a man of old family: he traced his descent from one of the great houses of England; but his forefathers had gradually sunk in the social scale and his father had not helped to raise himself or his children in it, by marrying an Irish reaper, whom he saw at work in the fields; a common woman without any education, but whose beauty had captivated him. They had several sons, rough, wild, uneducated men; of whom the tales told, surpassed even the ordinary accounts of the low social state of Squires' families in remote country districts in the last century. In those days when the Church of England had sunk into a lethargy, from which it is now happily awakened, Church patronage was looked on as a means of providing for the younger sons of a family, quite regardless of whether they were fitted or not for the sacred office. If there was a good living in the gift of the man who had sons, one of them was brought up for the Church as a matter of course. In the case I am now telling you about, the living, which was a very good one, belonged to the Squire, as well as the place and property, and he put one of his sons into it, who was the clergyman of the parish, when my grandfather bought the estate, and my father and mother came to live there. In former days one of the Vicar's brothers had taken the management of a flour mill in the place, and the quarrels between the two were a disgrace and a scandal to the neighbourhood. They were both powerfully built men with rough undisciplined natures, and they often settled their differences with their fists, in one of which encounters the Vicar lost his eye. The Miller however did not always have recourse to this method of punishing his brother; he had other ingenious ways of annoying him. One, so the people said, was by putting down the sluice gates at the mill, and thereby flooding the Vicar's cellars, which was easily done, as the mill was below the vicarage, and the vicarage close to the river. In fact the stories about the ways and doings of the whole family in the days of their youth, were endless; but when I remember the Vicar he was a man long past middle age, broken by ill health, showing in his powerfully built frame, that the reports of his great physical strength had not been exaggerated, but bearing no trace of those wild days, excepting in his sightless eye, and absence of all polish of manner.

Of course when their superiors in rank were rough and rude and always quarrelling, the people were not likely to be anything but rough and rude too, and I need hardly say that their spiritual destitution, as far as any teaching of the Church was concerned, was complete. When

my mother came, there was no school of any kind, and when she set up one at her own expense, the clergyman refused to help, and she had no one to whom she could look for co-operation in her benevolent exertions, excepting to a very good quaker who was a corn-factor and owned a mill in the place. He and his wife, the latter especially, gave her very assistance in their power; with their help a school was established, and made as efficient as it ever can be, where there is no co-operation and help from the clergyman; but a village school never can be what it ought to be, where that is wanting; at least that is my experience.

The Church was a very fine building, but defaced, as almost all churches at that time were, with whitewash and high pews, and every species of barbarous taste. Some of the beautiful Norman mouldings round the arches had been ruthlessly cut away, to let in the most hideous, and uninteresting mural tablets; the chancel roof had been lowered at some former time, so as quite to destroy the effect of beautiful three-light early English window, and it was only by great good luck that the fine carved wooden roof over the middle aisle, had not been hidden by a ceiling; a former proprietor of the place having offered to give the Church either a ceiling or a clock. Fortunately the Churchwardens chose the clock.

The dreariness of the Church was even surpassed by the dreariness of the services. I cannot say they were long, in point of time, as there was never a sermon in the morning, and in order that not a minute might be lost, the Vicar would not go to the Communion Table, but read the whole morning service from the reading desk; and everything in Church, was done on the same principle of economizing his time. But if the length of time was not actually so great, it seemed to me to be endless. It was years before I got over the feeling of weariness and distaste which Church inspired. The music was conducted by a few men who sang Tate and Brady's version of the Psalms, to the accompaniment of violins, and violoncellos, and the squeaking and groaning produced by these instruments in their hands were enough to drive any one with an acute ear for music distracted. Of course the congregation was very smal, hardly anyone but ourselves, and our servants, and a few of the farmers' families, went to Church. The Dissenting Chapel was crowded, and no one could wonder at it, or blame the people for going to hear what they could at all events understand. To be continued.

SONNING CHURCH.

BAPTISMS.

Nov. 14th.-Albert Ernest, son of William and Ann New, Woodley.
Martha. daughter of James and Mary Spencer, Sonning Eye.
Clara Elizabeth. daughter of George & Elizabeth Johnson, Sonning Eye.
Dec. 12th-Lydia, daughter of Thomas and Hannah Lewis, Ruscombe.

ALL SAINTS.'

Nov. 14th.-Robert, son of James and Ellen Herridge, Dunsden.

MARRIAGE.

Dec. 11th-At Sonning Church, James Cripps and Lucy Harper both of Dunsden.
SONNING.
BURIALS.

Nov. 28th.-Joel Lambourn, Sonning Eye, aged 82.

Dec. 5th-Jane Thorpe, Sonning Eye, aged 66.

Dec. 9th.-Walter Wakelin Cox, Sonning, aged 4 months.

ALL SAINTS.'

Church Services.

The Church Services at Sonning and at All Saints' will be the same as in the month of January.

To those who have so kindly helped us we return our best thanks. We hope to give in the March number, an account of the whole expenses for last year.

THE MOTHERS' MEETINGS.

The Mothers' meetings at Woodley School, will be continued during the month of February. The meeting on Wednesday, February 23rd, will be the last of the season.

MR. BRIGHT ON REFORM.

"It is a fact that no government, that no administration, that no laws, that no amount of industry or of commerce, that no extent of freedom, can give prosperity and solid comfort to the homes of the people, unless there be in those homes economy, temperance, and the practice of virtue. This which I am preaching is needful for all. But it is specially needful for those whose possessions are the least abundant and the least secure. If we could subtract from the ignorance, the poverty, the suffering, the sickness and the crime which are now witnessed amongst us, the ignorance, the poverty, the sickness, and the crime which are caused by one single, but most prevalent, bad habit or vice, the drinking needlessly of that which destroys body and mind and home and family, do we not all feel that this country would be so changed, and so changed for the better,. that it would be almost impossible for us to know it again ?"