Here was a case for the priest: he heard, Marked, inwardly digested, laid Finger on nose, smiled, "A little bird Chirps in my ear!"--then, "Bring a spade, Dig deeper!" he gave the word. And lo! when they came to the coffin-lid, Or the rotten planks which composed it once, Why, there lay the girl's skull wedged amid A mint of money, it served for the nonce To hold in its hair-heaps hid: Louis-d'ors, some six times five; And duly double, every piece. Now do you see? With the priest to shrive,-- With parents preventing her soul's release By kisses that keep alive,-- With heaven's gold gates about to ope,-- With friends' praise, gold-like, lingering still,-- What instinct had bidden the girl's hand grope For gold, the true sort?--"Gold in heaven, I hope; But I keep earth's, if God will!" Enough! The priest took the grave's grim yield; The parents, they eyed that price of sin As if _thirty pieces_ lay revealed On the place _to bury strangers in_, The hideous Potter's Field. But the priest bethought him: "'Milk that's spilt' --You know the adage! Watch and pray! Saints tumble to earth with so slight a tilt! It would build a new altar; that we may!" And the altar therewith was built. * * * * * Why I deliver this horrible verse? As the text of a sermon, which now I preach: Evil or good may be better or worse In the human heart, but the mixture of each Is a marvel and a curse. The candid incline to surmise of late That the Christian faith may be false, I find; For our Essays-and-Reviews' debate Begins to tell on the public mind, And Colenso's words have weight: I still to suppose it true, for my part, See reasons and reasons; this, to begin: 'T is the faith that launched point-blank her dart At the head of a lie,--taught Original Sin, The Corruption of Man's Heart. * * * * * CALIFORNIA AS A VINELAND. It has been reserved for California, from the plenitude of her capacities, to give to us a truly great boon in her light and delicate-wines. Our Pacific sister, from whose generous hand has flowed an uninterrupted stream of golden gifts, has announced the fact that henceforth we are to be a wine-growing people. From the sparkling juices of her luscious grapes, rich with the breath of an unrivalled climate, is to come in future the drink of our people. By means of her capacity in this respect we are to convert the vast tracts of her yet untilled soil into blooming vineyards, which will give employment to thousands of men and women,--we are to make wine as common an article of consumption in America as upon the Rhine, and to break one more of the links which bind us unwilling slaves to foreign lands.