Mr. PAINE'S "water-gas," after serving for months as the butt for ridicule, appears about to take its place among the ascertained facts of science. Whatever may be true respecting his theory that water is wholly converted into hydrogen or oxygen, which we certainly believe to be erroneous, there is little room to doubt that he possesses the means of producing hydrogen from water, with great facility, and in any quantity; and that the hydrogen acquires a high illuminating power by passing through spirits of turpentine. If one-half that well-informed men believe in respect to this discovery is true, it is the most important one made in the department of physical science within the century. Count DEMBINSKI, who bore so prominent a part in the Hungarian struggle, and who is represented as a very accomplished engineer, is now engaged as a dealer in cigars in New York. The condition of the political refugees from Germany in other parts of the world is less desirable than even this. In London many of them hawk Lucifer matches about the streets. In Australia doctors and professors break stone on the highways. Two barons and an artist, from Berlin, are thus employed; a Hamburgh physician deals in milk; and the son of a Berlin manufacturer is a cattle-driver. Missionaries in Western Africa report the existence of a regularly written language among a people there discovered. The alphabet is said to be syllabic like the Ethiopic and Cherokee; each character, of which there are about a hundred, representing a syllable. This fact, if authenticated, taken in connection with the existence of a very highly developed language in some of the rude African tribes, suggests many interesting problems in ethnographical science. GREAT BRITAIN.