her. 'Towards the close
of the last century, there was a winter night of intense frost; and
when the morning broke, the trees were nearly smitten to the core.
That year, there was not an olive gathered in Provence or Languedoc.
The next season, some of the stronger and younger trees partially
revived, and slips were planted from those to which the axe had been
applied; but the entire species of the tree had fallen off--had
dwindled, and pined, and become stunted; and the profits of olive
cultivation had faded with it.' Olive-gathering, it will be felt, is a
slow affair. The getting in this harvest is 'as business-like and
unexciting as weeding onions, or digging potatoes. A set of ragged
peasants--the country people hereabouts are poorly dressed--were
clambering barefoot in the trees, each man with a basket tied before
him, and lazily plucking the dull oily fruit. Occasionally, the
olive-gatherers had spread a white cloth beneath the tree, and were
shaking the very ripe fruit down; but there was neither jollity nor
romance about the process. The olive is a tree of association, but
that is all. Its culture, its manuring and clipping, and trimming and
grafting--the gathering of its fruits, and their squeezing in the
mill, when the ponderous stone goes round and round in the glutinous
trough, crushing the very essence out of the oily pulps, while the fat
oleaginous stream pours lazily into the greasy vessels set to receive
it; all this is as prosaic and uninteresting, as if the whole Royal
Agricultural Society were presiding in spirit over the operations.'

Our readers will now see that this is a racy, vigorous book, full of
new remark and clever painting; and we recommend them to test the
correctness of our opinions, therefore, by having recourse to the
volume itself, which is neither large nor expensive.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Claret and Olives, from the Garonne to the Rhone; or, Notes,
Social, Picturesque, and Legendary, by the Way._ By Angus B. Reach.
London: David Bogue. 1852.

THINGS TALKED OF IN LONDON.

_April 1852._

A good many comments and congratulations have passed of late touching
the change of system introduced into one of our official strongholds,
which dates from the days of the Plantagenets, perhaps earlier; for
Sir J. Herschel, as Master of the Mint, has made his first Report to
the Lords of the Treasury concerning the money-coining establishmen