between Panama and California than between Bombay and China. The causes of these results are plain enough to us, but to the English they are enigmas. The mission of Mr. Mackay will scarcely end in a revelation of the truth, that liberty and independence have kept healthy the blood in the vigorous limbs of the Americans, while trammels and vassalage have deadened the energies of the Indies; but it may have an important influence upon the question whether the East India Company's charter shall be renewed, and it certainly will develop much information interesting to the cotton-growers of the United States. * * * * * MR. DE QUINCEY is one of the greatest of the elder race of literary men now living in Great Britain, and we believe he is in no very affluent circumstances. The bestowal of a pension by the Government upon Mr. James Bailey, an editor of the classics, residing at Cambridge, on the ground of his "literary services," causes _The Leader_ thus to refer to the author of "The Opium Eater"-- "Where is Thomas De Quincey's pension? Some may not regard him, as we do, the very greatest living master of the English language; some may think lightly of those fragmentary works and fugitive articles with which he has for more than thirty years enriched our literature; but, whatever may be the individual estimate of his services, one fact is patent, namely, that you cannot mention De Quincey in any circle of the British Islands, pretending to literary culture, but his name will sound familiar; in most it will awaken responses of gratitude for high pleasures bestowed, in none will it arouse indignation of high power to base uses. Now, this we call a clear case for national beneficence. He has done the state service, and they know it; but they will not reward it." Apropos of pensions: Upon the whole, we have the best exchequer in the world, and to _soldiers_ we have evinced no special lack of liberality. To give five hundred dollars a year to Mr. Audubon, R. H. Dana, Moses Stuart, Edward Robinson, H. R. Schoolcraft, James G. Percival, C. F. Hoffman, and some half dozen others, would be something toward an "honorable discharge" of the country's obligations in the premises, and probably no slight addition to the happiness of men who have added much to the real glory of the nation, while it would cost less than a morning's useless debate in Congress. In a recent letter to Lord Brougham, on a cognate subject, Savage Landor exclaims: "Probably the time is not far distant when the arts and sciences, and even literary genius, may be deemed no less worthy of this distinction than the slaughter of a thousand men. But how, in the midst of our vast expenditure, spare so prodigious a sum as five hundred a year to six, and three hundred a year to six more!" * * * * *