they shall flourish in peace and plenty. On the other hand the destruction of the olive was a strong mark of God's displeasure: "Thou shalt have olive trees throughout all thy coasts, but thou shalt not anoint thyself with oil; for thine olive shall cast his fruit." Deut. 28, 40. See also Habak. 3, 17. The olive was especially valued on account of the oil which it yielded, which was a great luxury, and could be put to various uses. A full-sized tree, when it bears vigorously, produces a thousand pounds of oil. In gathering the olives, the Jews were bound to remember a very touching commandment in regard to the poor. "When thou beatest thine olive tree, thou shalt not go over the boughs again: it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow." Deut. 24, 20. Hear that, ye who not only stint, but even spurn the poor! Your spirit is not even as good as Judaism, to say nothing of christianity. Moses will condemn you; how then will you answer Christ! The manner of making the olive oil, and the uses made of it, are thus described: "The olives, from which oil is to be expressed, must be gathered by the hands, or softly shaken from the trees before they are fully ripe. The best oil is that which comes from the fruit with very light pressure. This is sometimes called in Scripture green oil, not because of its color, for it is pellucid, but because it is from unripe fruit. It is translated in Ex. xxvii. 20, pure olive-oil beaten, and was used for the golden candlestick. For the extraction of this first oil, panniers or baskets are used, which are gently shaken. The second and third pressing produces inferior oil. The best is obtained from unripe fruit; the worst, from that which is more than ripe. The oil of Egypt is worth little, because the olives are too fat. Hence the Hebrews sent gifts of oil to the Egyptian kings. Hos. xii, 1. The inferior quality is used in making soap. But the Hebrews used oil not merely in lamps, and with salads, but in every domestic employment in which butter is serviceable, and in the meat-offerings of the temple. It is observed by travelers, that the natives of oil countries manifest more attachment to this than to any other article of food, and find nothing adequately to supply its place. "A press was also used for the extraction of the oil, consisting of two reservoirs, usually eight feet square and four feet deep, situated one above the other. The berries, being in the upper one, were trodden out with the feet." The Mount of Olives derives its name from the number of fine olive trees which have in all ages flourished upon its sacred heights, as well as in the "sad Gethsemane" at its foot. The garden, or rather the plot where it once was, has still its sacred olives. "There are still," says Robinson, "within this enclosure, eight very old olive trees, with stones thrown around their trunks.' What associations cluster around this rural spot. "Giving myself up," says Robinson, "to the impressions of the moment, I sat down 'Tis midnight-and on Olive's brow, 'Tis midnight--and from all removed, 'Tis midnight-and for other's guilt 'Tis midnight-and from other plains, BLEST IN CHRIST. Nor eye hath seen so fair a sight, On Him my brightest hopes repose, But in Him feel supremely blest. 'Tis Jesus-who, in life, shall be When every other hope shall fail! X. Y. Z. CHRISTIAN FORGIVENESS. ADVICE TO YOUNG MEN. There are thousands of men who possess wealth which has been obtained at the neglect of intellectual cultivation. Those would give half their fortunes if they could be set back and have the leiEure for mental culture which young men are throwing away. Let this be no longer. Commence now to devote an hour or two each evening to study. It may be difficult at first, but it will be easier as you proceed, and at length will become the most delightful of all your enjoyments. The mind makes the man. Do not suffer yours to be dwarfed by too much enjoyment either in business or pleasure. Whatever you do for the cultivation of your intellect will be permanent. Every hour expended in this manner will return you five hours of the most elevated enjoyment in after years. Nor is this all. As you become intelligent, your opportunities for usefulness will increase, and you can be the benefactor of your With an increase of usefulness comes an increase of emoluThe better able you are to help others, the better qualified will you be to help yourselves. Do not then trifle away the bsst years of your existence in low and frivolous pleasures, which will only degrade you, and impair both your usefulness and success in after life. race. ment. FAREWELL, MOTHER. Farewell, Mother, thou hast left us Farewell, Mother, thou art happy Farewell, Mother, we in sadness Farewell, Mother, gone for ever, Farewell, Mother-gently sleeping Farewell, Mother, thou must molder Farewell, Mother, thy calm features Yet it pains our hearts to leave thee, Farewell, Mother, may we meet thee GOOD TEMPER. SINCE trifles make the sum of human things, Our Monthly Retrospect. UNITED STATES. The most cheering fact we have to record as the development of the past month is the prospect, now reduced to an admitted certainty, of one of the most abundant grain and fruit harvests with which we have been blessed for years. From all sections of the country the accounts were favorable during the earlier part of the season, and now the wheat crop is so far advanced as to be beyond the reach of any serious injury, unless from the depredations of the weevil, which has not yet made its appearance, at least in this section. During a trip through parts of Lancaster, Chester and Montgomery counties near the close of the month, we everywhere beheld evidences of the most ample rewards of the labors of the husbandman. The quantity of wheat out is very large and well headed. In some places the heavy rains which occurred about the 24th ult. beat much of it down, where the straw was too heavy, but the process of heading and filling were too far advanced to result disastrously. The only loss which would be likely to result to the farmer might be in the increased labor of cutting and gathering. The Peach crop will be unusually fine, the trees everywhere being literally burdened with this luscious fruit. The apples and other fruits will be abundant. The crops of corn do not look to be as forward as might seem desirable, owing to the extreme backwardness of the season, though if the late rains are followed by a few weeks of settled, warm and "growing weather," the average yield will compare favorably with other years. The same may be said of the potato crops, though we hear some of the farmers expressing their fears that "we are having too much rain," and that "the potato crop will be ruined!" We have often been struck with the disposition of farmers to complain or murmur when there is no cause for it. No matter how high the prices they receive for their produce, you seldom hear a farmer who is willing to admit that he is “making anything." Such a dispo sition is to be much regretted and seriously deprecated. The farmer is the true nobleman of nature and the most independent of any class of society. He has all within himself upon which the existence and necessaries of life, with the substantial comforts of Home, really depend. The blessing of Providence rests upon him in a peculiar manner, and he should be the last of men to murmur at His dispensations. Our land has never yet been cursed with a famine, and however much the poorer classes in the large cities may have suffered, the farmer in this country has really never experienced the trial of Want. Besides, as a general thing, the calls upon his benevolence are much less frequent and heavy than upon the citizens who are called upon almost every year to alleviate the distress of their suffering poor. During the past year, especially, the farmer has been peculiarly favored. While he has received the highest, and, in some instances, the most exorbitant prices for the produce of his farm, the wages of such labor as he is obliged to employ have not been increased in an adequate proportion. Then, ye noblemen of nature, who, under Providence, cause the desert places to blossom and the wilderness to bring forth fruit to make glad the heart of man, be grateful and murmur not, lest God be angered and smite the land of your hope. The great event of the political world during the past month has been the assembling, deliberations, and, finally, the partial dissolution of the National American or Know Nothing Convention at Philadelphia. Like the old political parties this new one, which had swept the entire north as with a whirlwind of unprecedented triumph was doomed to split at last upon the rock of Slavery. A resolution being adopted, by a vote of 80 to 59, affirming "the existing laws upon the subject of slavery as a final and conclusive settlement of that question in spirit and in substance," the delegates from the northern States withdrew and unanimously agreed upon an appeal to the People in which they denounce the repeal of the Missouri Compromise by the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska act and declare that they "will use all constitutional means to maintain the positive guarantee of that compact until the object for which it was enacted has been consummated by the admission of Kansas and Nebraska as free States." The newspapers both north and south are advocating the formation of parties on this issue, and from present indications the presidential campaign of 1856 will be a very exciting and ambiguous contest. The friends and opponents of the Maine liquor law have been severely exercised of late on the subject of the recent liquor riot in the city of Portland. Neal Dow was bitterly denounced by the liquor press as a murderer and his "illegal acts" held up to the public as the cause of the riot. The official investigations and reports have triumphantly acquitted Mayor Dow and thrown the responsibility of the riot, with all its consequences, upon the enemies of the law, who conspired to destroy city property under the power of mob law. The authorities were justified in every step they took, and had the Mayor hesitated to use the authority placed at his disposal, and the mob been allowed to destroy the City Hall, with its contents, he would have been denounced as a cowardly and ineficient executive by every opposing press in the country, and the enforcement of the Maine Law represented as an impossibility. They are now pretty well satisfied that prohibitory liquor laws can and will be enforced as well as other laws, and we trust the lesson which Hon. Neal Dow has taught his enemies will not be without its good effect on all interested. The unconstitutionality of the new liquor law has been argued in the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, before Chief Justice Shaw, on the appeal of a woman who had been sentenced to the House of Correction for selling liquor, and was committed to jail, not being able to give bonds. The Attorney General and District Attorney appeared for the Commonwealth, and after an argument of several hours, the Court postponed a decision, Judge Shaw afterward decided that the thirty-second section of the liquor law, giving the right to appeal, is repugnant, inconsistent, unconstitutional and void; that it has no force to repeal statutes inconsistent with its provisions, and that it therefore leaves the revised statutes in full force, so that a committal in accordance with the old statute is valid, although the commitment would be wholly unsupported by the new law. The committal was therefore sustained. This may be considered a very important decision in sustaining the enforcement of the laws against the traffio. His The friends of Horace Greeley were shocked with the intelligence, brought by the last European arrival, that this celebrated editor and philosopher had been imprisoned in France, where he is attending the French Industrial Exhibition. The natural supposition was that the event had a political character and that the Imperial Government had been paying him off for some excessive frankness of a democratic nature of which he or his paper had been guilty. Such however was not the case. Imperial Majesty limits his repressive measures toward The Tribune to the frequent suppression of copies sent to subscribers in France, and has not yet laid his heavy hand on the person of any member of that establishment in his dominions. The history of Mr. Greeley's adventure is narrated by himself in a very happy manner, occupying four columns of his paper. The arrest was made at the suit of Lechesne the sculptor, who had a claim against the Crystal Palace of New York for a statue --which still lies safe and sound in one the courts of the Palace-and who thought to hold Mr. Greeley pecuniarily responsible as a director of the Association. The Court however refused to adopt Mr. Lechesne's view of the matter and discharged the defendant. Mr. Greeley spent two days in "Clichy," resolutely refusing to pay the unreasonable demand, and he gives a very graphic account of prison life and a chapter of good philosophy on getting into debt and prison. It was a fortunate ciroumstance that Horace got into "Clichy," otherwise his readers would have been deprived of the most interesting and spicy letter he ever wrote from Europe. Morals in California seem to be improving under the restricting influence of wholesome legislation. The antigambling law has gone into operation and its provisions are reported to be very generally complied with, causing considerable satisfaction among the people. The El Dorado House, the |