Whilst contemplating the gloomy, or at least uncertain, prospects of the Spanish treasury, I am forcibly reminded of Cuba and of American proposals for its purchase. I have not heard a statement of the exact amount the States are disposed to give; but I have been assured, on no mean authority, that it would suffice to pay off the whole of the debt, home and foreign, and that a handsome surplus would still remain for roads and railways. Besides these advantages, Cuba, once sold, Spain might safely reduce her fleet and army, for she would then have no reason to apprehend war with the United States, as she at present has none to anticipate aggression or interference on the part of any European power. Relieved of her heaviest burthens, and blessed with an honest government (if indeed it be possible that such endure in a country upon which the curse of misgovernment seems to rest), Spain might soon and easily forget the loss of that cherished colony, whose retention, under present circumstances, is more a question of pride than of profit, and to whose loss without compensation, she must, I fear, by the force of events, be prepared sooner or later to submit. VEDETTE. _Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh._ ----- Footnote 1: _Of the Plurality of Worlds; an Essay. Also a Dialogue on the same subject._ Second Edition. Parker and Son, 1854. _More Worlds than One, the Creed of the Philosopher, and the Hope of the Christian_, By Sir DAVID BREWSTER, K.H., D.C.L. Murray, 1854. _The Planets: Are they Inhabited Worlds?_ Museum of Science and Art. By DIONYSIUS LARDNER, D.C.L., Chapters i., ii., iii., iv. Walton and Maberly, 1854. Footnote 2: _Works_, vol. xi. p. 198 (Bishop Heber’s edition). The following is the entire sentence of which the above is the commencing section: “Whatever we talk, things are as they are—not as we grant, dispute, or hope; depending on neither our affirmative nor negative, but upon the rate and value which God sets upon things.” Footnote 3: _Dialogue_, p. 37. Footnote 4: _More Worlds than One_, p. 59. Footnote 5: _Dialogue_, pp. 5, 6. Footnote 6: _Daily News._ Footnote 7: _Essay_, p. 120. Footnote 8: _Ante_, p. 300, No. cccclxvii. Footnote 9: _Essay_, p. 202. Footnote 10: Ibid., pp. 134–136. Footnote 11: Ibid., p. 137. Footnote 12: