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Mr. John R. Bartlett’s boundary commission will soon be upon the field of its activity.  We were pleased to see that Mr. Davis, of Massachusetts, a few days ago presented in the Senate petitions from Edward Everett, Jared Sparks, and others, and from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, at Boston, to the effect that it would be of great public utility to attach to the boundary commission to run the line between the United States and Mexico, a small corps of persons well qualified to make researches in the various departments of science.

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William C. Richards, the very clever and accomplished editor of the Southern Literary Gazette was the author of “Two Country Sonnets,” contributed to a recent number of The International, which we inadvertently credited to his brother, T. Addison Richards the well-known and much esteemed landscape painter.

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Major Poussin, so well-known for his long residence in this country as an officer of engineers, and, more recently, as Minister of the French republic,—­which, intelligent men have no need to be assured, he represented with uniform wisdom and manliness,—­is now engaged at Paris upon a new edition of his important book, The Power and Prospects of the United States.  We perceive that he has lately published in the Republican journal Le Credit, a translation of the American instructions to Mr. Mann, respecting Hungary.  In his preface to this document, Major Poussin pays the warmest compliments to the feelings, measures and policy of our administration, with which he contrasts, at the same time, those of the French Government.  He hopes a great deal for the Democratic cause in Europe from the moral influences of the United States.

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DR. JOHN W. FRANCIS, one of the most excellent men, as well as one of the best physicians of New York, has received from Trinity College, Hartford, the degree of Doctor of Laws.  We praise the authorities of Trinity for this judicious bestowal of its honors.  Francis’s career of professional usefulness and variously successful intellectual activity, are deserving such academical recognition.  His genial love of learning, large intelligence, ready appreciation of individual merit, and that genuine love of country which has led him to the carefullest and most comprehensive study of our general and particular annals, and to the frequentest displays of the sources of its enduring grandeur, constitute in him a character eminently entitled to our affectionate admiration.

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