Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434, page 49 by Various Authors
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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 Re