The Sun.
London, England, 1870-04-26 00:00:00

PROFITS FOR PRISONERS.

The "useful labour" system has been introduced
among the inmates of Gloucester Prison, with a high
degree of success. After referring to the statute
which requires the " long term" inmates of all
gaols to perform three months' compulsory hard
labour, the rules permit that after seventy-five days'
approved labour, the prisoners may be pro-
moted to the "second class," in which they
will not be required to practise their ordinary labour
for more than four hours each day, but will be em-
ployed at other times in skilled work under the trade
instructors. Such work is to be performed by
tasks, fifty of ythich qualify a prisoner for the " third
class" of labour, in which not more than one hour
per day of first class hard labour will be exacted.
Instead of it he will be required to perform daily an
allotted task of skilled labour, after which he will be
allowed to perform extra work, and for this he will
be credited with marks, representing an amount in
money. The sum earned by him in this way will
be expended for his benefit upon his discharge, in
such manner as the visiting justices, after consulting
the prisoner, may direct.

BIRTHS, MARRIAGES, AND NOVELS.

Azamut-Batuk, in the Pall Gazette,Mallßirth Macr
a r
rdoesi e
sa
bit of prophecy, under the head of a 0
and Novels." In that distant time when humanity
will take the-serious resolutions of improving itself
and becoming wiser, there will be, he says, three:pro-
positions established with a view to foster these reso-
lutions. First, that not everybody can have chil-
dren; secondly, that not everybody can write navels
and thirdly that not everybody can govern other people.
In support,of this argument, he relates a conversa-
tion with a very clever old nobleman, Sumbar Bey,
an uncle of his. The old gentleman had travelled
in Europe, and knew much of it, Ile said the
chief unhappiness of Europe lay in the enormous
amount of children and novels it produced. If the
amount of novels were less there would be less
romanticism and more common sense, ho con-
tended, and if there were more common sense
there would be much less flirtation and fewer love
romances between people, who, both by their age
and their education ought still to be at school, and
therefore there never would be such an enormous
amount of frightfully large families. On the other
hand, he said, if the families were not so large,
countries would not be so much overpeopled, the
demand for serious kinds of labour would be greater,
and fewer people would have to recur, for want of
any serious work, either to novel-writing or novel-
reatlinz.

Some six miles from Nottingham, on the Mansfield
line of railway, lies a miserable collection of cottages
and small shops rejoicing in the barbarous name of
Hucknall Torkard. The village is one among many
other places in the same district, as grimy and un-
poetical looking as itself—oases of dirt in a
sandy desert of unclaimed land, which is all
that remains of what was once Sherwood
forest, and still bears that famous name. The dark
woods of Newstead are just visible in the distance,
from a time-worn church, small and ruinous, which
overhangs the single street of the place. In this
church, " more lonely, more forsaken by his fellow-
men in his death than in the darkest moments
of his self-embittered life," Lord Byron
is buried, shut out not only from the living world,
but from its very remembrance. He lies beside some
three or four of his ancestors under a plain white
tablet, without ornament of outline or inscription,
erected to his memory by Mrs. Leigh. The "Byron
pew," with its green baize faded and torn, has
now fallen into the hands of " some decent
sort of folks in the village." The Church is already
tottering to its fall ; the "decent folks " will shortly
be obliged to seek another shelter for their drowsy
devotions, and perhaps public attention may then be
draWn to the worse than neglect to which the
burial-place of Lord Byron has been subjectedo