New Orleans daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1851-1866, 1854-05-05
FROM W.aSHLWGTo.N.
Special Correspondence Of tbs Nsn Orleans grsssss

Special Correspondents of tbs Nt ORLEANS Grtsftmt
WASHINGTON, April %, 1854.
In asking, yesterday, that the House would
return to the Senate the bill for confirming the
title of the settlers upon the Maison Rouge grant,
the latter body desired merely to correct cleri-
cal error.
The Senate adjourned yesterday until Mon
day, and the House followed the example day
There is here at present small conyoeation
Of scientific men, who meet at the Smithsonian
building and read papers to snall audiences
upon chiefly obscure subjects. dropped in up
on one Of these meetings of what the back woods
people would call 6 scieneed men, and was not
much disappointed in finding an ordinary-look-
ing assemblage, whose chief outward character
istics were spectacles and bald heads. 1t is, per-
haps, harmless vanity which induces these
gentlemen to perambulate the country and con-
yene at stated times and places to exhibit their
profound requirements; but it is notable that
such gentlemen do not really contribute practi-
cally to the advancement of the arts and scien-
ces in any degree comparable with their preten-
sions, or to the extent of others with less recon-
lite learning. They peer into many subjects as
curiously as maybe looking into a marrow
bone, but somehow they fail to extract any real
nutrition. We cannot get any useful informa-
ton from them about the potato rot, or the pear
blight, and they too sensitive to ridicule and
too chary of their reputation as sc scienced men,
to give the public their opinion upon the matter
of spiritual manifestations. 1t is not from their
ranks that we may expect such men to come out
as Whitney, and Fulton, and Morse, and Morton
Indeed, if such men as these should offer to take
aseat among them, they migh teye them askance
snd perhaps exclude the intruders, even as Mo-
liere and Piron q think it was) were refused
admission to the French Academy of Science
The Academy repaired the injustice to Moliere,
after his death, by placing his bust in their
midst with the Inscription - Nothing was want
ing to his fame, he was wanting to ours" Phi
ron, a poet of deserved celebrity, revenged him
self by a witty epigram in his own epitaph--
$ O. git Piron, qni ~ etdit rie1. pas meme
acaaemicieas'' lies Piron, who was no.
thing, not even member of the Academy.
There are, in the assemblage here, two or
three gentlemen of acknowledged scholarship,
but as for the rest, there are men to be found all
over the country, not merely their equals, but
their superiors, whose scientific researches do
not get beyond the newspapers.
The weather is still unstable, and all vepeta-
ton extremely backward in this vicinity.
The Hon D D. Barnard, of Albany, N York,
formerly Minister to Berlin, is lying dangerously
sick here. The venerable Father Matthew, Of
st, Patrick's Church, is probably near the close
of his long life of useful piety
The Hippodrome has been crowded with visi-
tors, but the weather has been uiteunfortunate
for the exhibition, which is held in a very large
area Of ground enclosed and covered with can
vas. Some of the gynanastic feats displayed are
really wonderful CHRoN1cLER.