nient, certainly, to be able to be poor and rich at
the same time, and to combine all the temporal advantages of property
with the spiritual advantages of poverty. The "peculium" is, of course,
elastic, and there is no particular place for drawing the line in the
banker's book. A vow of poverty which admits of a "peculium" in the
shape of a private fortune is like a vow of tea-totalism, which allows
of a "peculium" in the form of a private gin-bottle.

* * * * *

THE GOD OF THE RUSSIANS

God of the Russians!--who is he?
A great--and bulky--deity:
He stands some six feet two, or three.

He is proportionally stout;
The lofty form is well filled out
Of the Controller of the Knout.

He ranks among the _Di Majores_,
And in despotic power he glories;
He once was worshipped by the Tories.

He banquets on celestial fare,
His Nectar's _Clicquot_, potion rare!
And his Ambrosia's _caviare_.

As to the Russian God's costume,
It is a cocked hat and a plume,
If so to speak we may presume:

Likewise, a military stock;
Belt, sword, and coat--a tail or frock:
He stands in jack-boots like a rock.

Yet any thinker might suppose
He'd wear a different sort of clothes,
More ancient--classical--than those.

For this same God of Russia seeks
To be the God, too, of the Greeks.
Then why does he sport coat and breeks?

Old NICHOLAS should wear the loose
Robe that once clad the form of ZEUS,
That is the garment for the DEUCE.

* * * * *

BRITANNIA'S SAFETY BELT.

Considering how much England is indebted for its safety to the magic
belt of water that runs round it, every Englishman, when speaking of St.
George's Channel, ought, in true nautical fervour, to ejaculate: "Bless
its old CHOPS!"

* * * * *

INFECTION GLEBE.

Everybody knows that an intramural churchyard has a tendency to enlarge
itself--not in area, but in perpendicularity. It is in every sense a
rising concern, and it swells like an investment at compound interest.
The attraction of mortality increases in a ratio multiplying with the
increase of the mass--and what is there to prevent so deadly a nuisance
from being immediately abolished? Hear the BISHOP OF LONDON in his
evidence given before the Lords' Committee on the Great Extramural
Cemetery Bill--opposed by the LORD BISHOP:--

"I wish, in a very few wo