The Sun.
London, England, 1835-03-16 00:00:00

OLYMPIC THi;IATRE.

*le act, written, we
On Saturday evening a new piece in 6.
understand, by Mr. Planche, was played re: r the first time.
It is called The Court Beauties, and if it does not illustrate
an anecdote in the life of Charles the Second, it *Picts with
tolerable accuracy some of the manners and habits 01" the pc
-
nod at which he reigned. Mr. Planche has eccasionalii
played considerable smartness and tact in his dialogue, al-
though he seems apt to forget that some of the best points
have appeared in other shapes. He has acted the part of
plagiarist to himself; and, whilst allowing that a jest when it
first appears may be very good and worthy of repetition, still
it may be as well to confine it to' where it first gained the light
of day. This piece, however, has the defect of being to
os
long for the quantity of incident, and therein a general want
of interest from the introduction of a vast number of charac-
ters, whose presence might easily be dispensed with. It is
not much more than a vehicle for the exhibition of some hand-
some costume, got up with care and an attention to minutiae,
which shows that the dress-maker and the property-man are
persons of no mean importance, and that the author must de..
pend as much upon them, as upon his own efforts, to secure
the success of his labours. The last scene, however, had a
novel and pleasing effect. It introduced eight tableaux vi-
vans, exact copies of the celebrated pictures of the beauties
of the Court of Charles the Second, as they were painted by
Sir Godfrey Kneller. " The Beauties" were personated by
the pretty young actresses of the theatre, and the representa-
tions of the back grounds were precisely as the artist had
painted them. The pannels occupied the whole extent of the
stage. At the conciusk.n the lessee herself came forward,
and, in an epilogue of redeetn;,ng pleasantry, besought the fa-
vour of the audience in behalf of The Court Beauties-.

PROGRESS OF IMPROVEMENTS AT
WEYMOUTH AND THE ISLE OP PORTLAND.

It is with great pleasure we are enabled to lay before cur
readers the following particulars of and relative to the various
improvements made and about to be made at the well-known

sea-port town of Woymouth, and the Isle of Portland.
Weymouth, as most persons are aware, was formerly the
occasional residence of Royalty, and is resorted to by vast
numbers of the fashionables for the purpose of sea-bathing.
The spirit of improvement which has become so general has
for some time past developed itself here, and as a necessary
consequence, various improvements have been and are about
to be made. Several of the old streets have been widened,
and new ones erected ; a gas station is now being built, to
light the town; a chapel of ease is being erected; large in-
closures of ground from the sea have been effected; and a
bridge from Weymouth to the Isle of Portland is now in cos.
templation. But to these we will refer separately.
The town of Weymouth is at present lit with oil lamps,.
but the vast superiority of gas-light to these being so well
known, - Burdon, Esq., one of the Members of Parliament
for the town, has at his own expense commenced the erection
of gas-works. In order that they might not' be offensive to
the inhabitants, they are erected at Littlefield, a spot divided
from the town by the river.. The gas will be conveyed to the
town by means of a tunnel, now making under this river. The
tunnel; when completed, will be 900 feet in length ; the depth
from high water is fifty feet ; it is four feet wide, and six feet
six inches high. The whole works will cost about 8,000/.
They are expected to be so far completed by the ensuing
winter; as to admit of the town being then lit with gas.
In consequence of the inconvenience experienced by the
inhabitants, residents in the parish of Wyke (the parish on
the west side of Weymouth), and the increase of the number
of the inhabitants, the present Rector, the Rev. George Cham-
berlain, has at his own expense commenced the building of a
commodious Chapel of ease. It is being erected in the tho-
roughfare leading from the bridge which unites the two
parishes, and it is expected to be completed in the course of
this year. We should be glad to see the example thus nobly
set by the Rev. Gentleman followed by the rectors of parishes
similarly circumstanced.

About forty acres of ground has just been inclosed from the
back sea-water by the Corporation of Weymouth, who intend
converting it- into a park, to bo open for the resort of the
inhabitants and visitors. This will be a great acquisition to
the town.

For some years past it has been in contemplation to erect a
bridge from Weymouth to the Isle of Portland. At present,
during stormy weather, the inhabitants of the respective places
are unable to communicate with each other, and at any time
they can only do so by means of a dangerous ferry. The
great inconvenience resulting from this state of things has at
length caused the subject of a bridge to be again mooted, and
we understand the bridge is now almost certain of being
speedily erected. Eminent engineers have been employed,
who have made plans for a bridge, and reported the practi-
cability of its erection. The necessary steps are now being
taken to obtain an Act of Parliament for its erection, which,
in the course of this year, it is expected, will be commenced.
When this bridge is erected, the inhabitants of Weymouth
and Portland will be able at all times to commuicate with each
other, the advantage of which will be necessarily great. This
will doubtless also prove a great inducement to persons to
visit Weymouth. New roads in connection with the intended
bridge arc also in contemplation. The making of the bridge
and the roads will necessarily enhance the value of property
both in Weymouth and Portland—in the latter place more
especially.
We should not be surprised to see the erection of the bridge
followed by the construction of the long-talked-of Breakwater
at Portland. This was first projected by the late Mr. John
Harvey of Weymouth, Civil Engineer, who during his lifetime
brought the subject frequently before the public through the
medium of the press. Since his decease it has been taken up
by Mr. John Harvey, his son, a resident at Weymouth, who
has ciorly pointed out the great national benefits which would
accrue froZi the construction of this Breakwater.

We have nt; time at present to enlarge on this subject, but
on some future occasion we may again revert to it

NVRITECROSS-STREET PRISON.

(From Vol. 3 of Scenes and Stories by a Clergyman in Debt,

just published.)

Whitecross-street Prison is by far the largest and most ex-
tensive of the gaols in which men in this country are confined
for debt. Its prisoners are more numerous, its enactments
and regulations more severe, its accommodations more re-
stricted, and its society more mixed, than those of either the
King's Bench, the Fleet, the Marshalsea—and we had nearly
said Horsemonger-lane ; but we recollect that the latter is a
gaol simply fit for felons, and into which it is an inhuman out-
rage on the first principles of justice to confine a person who
has not been guilty of some marked and heinous crime. The
Whitecross-street Prison, which has not been erected more
than a quarter of a century—if so long—was built for the pur-
pose of consolidating in one temple of sorrow, poverty, and
guilt, the debtors' side of Newgate, the Poultry and Giltspur-
street Compters, and the Ludgate prison, the three last of
which were originally separate buildings in different parts of
the City. The new prison was divided into wards, or com-
partments, named after the old gaols, and so called the Lud-
gate ward, the Giltspur ward, the Poultry ward, &c. Besides
these there is the Middlesex side of the prison, intended for
prisoners arrested within the county, and the forty-shilling
ward, for the debtors sent in by the orders of the Court of
Requests, and whose embarrassments do not overtop the sum
of forty shillings, until indeed they become doubled by the
costs of law. We must also mention a receiving ward—the
room into which deb Ors are ushered the first day and night of
their imprisonment—a chapel, a sick ward, a strong room, a
kitchen, and a sort of tap, to which the inmates have given the
nomenclature of " the Scratch"—and I believe we have told
of all the departments and divisions of one of the most mon-
strous Leviathans of tyranny and iniquity ever raised by human
injustice upon the curse-cemented superstructure of poverty,
misfortune, persecution, dishonesty, and guilt. Within no
walls, not excepting even those of the Bastille and the prisons
of the Spanish Inquisition, has there ever existed so deep and
heavy a load of positive unhappiness—of actual heart-breaking
and acute misery. Greater torture of the limb, mightier exer-
cise of terror, more severe personal suffering, and darker dun-
geon-like confinement, have, we know, often hurried men to
confession or to death—have broken a coward, sometimes even
a brave spirit ; have crushed a weak constitution, and shattered
the energies of youth and hope. Rai; these effects have in all
lands taken their rise in state tyranny have been visited
in the fear or the suspicion of governments, or by the mad su-
perstition of priests ; or they have been the punishments of
desperate treachery, or atrocious penal crimes. Never have
they been the result of a widely practised and openly avowed
system, founded upon laws framed by a legislature in ssupport
of a free constitution. Neither, are we prepared to prove, has
the worst State or Criminal Prison in any other land,—and
are willing to retread the path of civilization as far as one hun-
dred years will take us back into times and practices of cruelty
—disseminated so much real sorrow and real ruin too—as the
English Debtors' Prison of Whitecross-street, in an equal pe-
riod of one, two, four, eight, or even ten years. For two in-
stances in which they have guillotined a man's head in France,
or crushed his body upon the wheel in Spain for state treason,
religious heresy, or civil murder, you will find ten where they
have broken his heart in England—for debt 1 and for one in-
stance where the Inquisition or the Bastille, having impri-
soned a father in those lands, have also driven the family into
exile, you may get fifty where an Englishman's confinement in
Whitecross-street has plunged his wife and children into whist
are worse than a thousand exiles, starvation and despair. In-
dividual suffering is undoubtedly greater in the state dungeon,
but spreading, gathering, goading privation and misfortune,—
emigrating as it were from the actual prison into the great
heart of society, and poisoning the social springs of life,—
take their rise and go abroad from the debtors' gaol. Effects
more desperate, but never so dangerously distributed and so
widely spread, may come from a Newgate or a Bastille. There
is also this reflection ;—that one punishment is the mighty
hatred of a government crushing an individual, or Justice fall-
ing in retribution upon crime—while the other is but the
petty tyranny of one man over another, not a jot or tittle better
than the system of West India slavery, which has been all over
the country so vigorously decried. Indeed it is a strange but
most probable inconsistency, that many a hardworking Eng-
lishman may yet be deprived of his liberty for want of power
to pay those taxes which will immediately arise out of a grant
of twenty millions to pay for the emancipation of the blacks—
the negro refusing to go to his work on his estate in, the
West Indies, the white taken from his work into the Gilt-
spur or Middlesex wards—a most equal application of the
principles of freedom !

Twelve working glass•manufacturers and two women
arrived at Calais, from Paris, on the 25th February, and em-
barked on board the Belfast steamer. It appears that they havo
been engaged by Mr. Boyce, of Birmingham, to work in glass
and crystal.