about 180 men, to this there is a Staff
of Officers attached with salaries as stated
below yearly:-

This does not include the salaries of the
Doctor and Clergyman, which can safely be
put down as £400 more, so there is upwards
of £2000 expended in paying the officials
alone, in a prison holding only 180 men. I
do not know what the Rations, Clothing,
Bed and Bedding, Coals, Candles, and a host of
other requisites too numerous to mention will
amount to in a year, but it must be, at least,
double what the salaries come to or £4000;
so that £6000 is expended annually to keep
one hundred and eighty soldiers in confinement,
this sum would pay double that number
at their duty, and when we consider
that those prisoners kept up at such an
expense to the state, are of no benefit to the
army, they neither work for Government or
make shoes for their Comrades, nor make
clothing for themselves, they do not sew,
weave, or spin. If they must have prisons,
let the prisoners be employed in tasks that
would not injure their Constitutions, as Shot
Drill, &c., is so well known to do. Again, do
men after imprisonment prove better
soldiers? If any answer this I am sorry to
think it must be in the negative—for let
a man be of however good behaviour, in a
prison he must meet the worst of Characters,
and "who can touch pitch without being
defiled."

The crimes committed by Soldiers are in
most instances of a trifling nature compared
to those committed by Civilians; but the
soldier fares worse in a Military Prison than
the felon does in a Civil Prison. How is
this? for I find that at Dartmoor, convicts
get as their daily ration twenty-seven ounces
of bread, and eight ounces of Cooked Meat—
without bone, one pint of Cocoa in the morning,
and one pint of Oatmeal porridge in the
evening, and potatoes to dinner. This is what
is termed able-bodied diet. There are other
scales, where some are allowed porter, others
treacle, &c. Their hours of labour are from
seven A.M. until five P.M., an hour is allowed
for dinner from twelve to one, they attend
chapel twice a day—and above all this, three-halfpence
daily is placed to their credit, which
accumulates until their term of imprisonment
expires. This they receive on leaving
the prison. They likewise have books lent to
them, Classes are formed for Instruction,
Chaplains visit them in their Cells,
everything done to make them wiser and better
men.

I say nothing against all this and more
being done for the felon; but I ask why
the Soldier prisoner is so miserably fed?

Compare the scale of diet as laid down for
the Soldier in prison, and that allowed to the
felon: instead of three-halfpence a day going
to the good of the Soldier—I was charged in
my account three shillings and sixpence for
the use of clothing I had while in prison.
There is here again a wide difference between
the two.

JAPANESE SOCIAL LIFE.

THERE is a general air of resemblance
between social life in Japan and social life
in the Western kingdoms. The Japanese
meet to talk, to sing, to dance, to play; they
make water parties and drink tea together;
they hunt and hawk; they ask riddles, and
they play at forfeits; they act charades, and
no doubt they sometimes gossip about friends
and acquaintances.

But here we come to a point of divergence;
and as their prayers are executed by the revolutions
of a wheel, and as a fervent spirit
stands no chance against a vigorous arm, so
we find another anomaly in regard to scandal.
It is done by a professor, who makes a business
of it; gets up his inuendoes and facts
and incidents, and recites them in public at
so much an hour. But the strangest part of
the thing is, that this professional scandal-monger
is a polished gentleman. He is looked
up to as a model of politeness and high breeding,
and is expected to raise the tone of the
society which he enlivens by his anecdotes.
In fact, the general air of resemblance fades
away when we look into some of the details
of the three great events of life, birth, death,
aud marriage, and find how strangely they
are conducted by the inhabitants of the
Eastern kingdom.

Take, for example, a marriage. A Japanese
"gentleman about to marry " may be influenced
in his choice by any or all of the many
motives which influence gentlemen in Europe.
By way of making known his intentions to
the family of the lady whom he has chosen,
however, he affixes the branch of a certain
shrub to her father's house. If it is accepted,
so is the lover; if no notice is taken of it, he
withdraws his suit.

If affection has drawn him to the maiden,
and she wishes to show that she reciprocates
his feelings, she blackens her teeth, and they
will remain black for the rest of her life. At
a later stage of the proceedings, she will pluck
out her eyebrows. We must suppose that
the gentlemen appreciate these marks of devotion;
but only imagine an English woman
slitting her nose or cutting off her ears, in