THE PEACE CONGRESS of Frankfort closed its session on the 22d of August.  However commendable its apparent object, it cannot be concealed that this and the preceding congress of the same kind have been little more than processes for the elevation of insignificant people into a transient notoriety.  This year the usual philanthropic resolutions were passed.  Victor Hugo, of France, excused himself from attendance on the score of ill-health; but the country was represented by Emile de Girardin.  The congress is to meet next year simultaneously with the great World’s Exposition at London.  The most piquant incidents of the session were the speech of George Copway, a veritable American Indian Chief, and the presence, in one of the visitors’ tribunes, of the famous General Haynau, whose victories and cruelties last year, in prosecuting the Hungarian war, were the theme in the congress of much fine eloquence and indignation.

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A PROJECT is on foot for opening a spacious Zoological and Botanical Garden in the north part of the island of New York, immediately on the Hudson.  A plan of an association for the purpose has been drawn up by Mr. Audubon, a son of the eminent ornithologist—­the same who lately made an overland journey to California.  His courage and perseverance in that expedition have given the public a sufficient pledge of the energy and constancy of his character, and his scientific knowledge, educated as he has been from his early childhood to be a naturalist, qualifies him as few are qualified, for the superintendence of such an establishment.  The spot chosen for the garden is the property of the Audubon family, adjoining the Trinity Cemetery, and contains about twenty acres, which is about a third larger than the London Zoological Gardens.

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The London Standard having asserted that “Mr. D’Israeli is not nor ever was a Jew,” a correspondent of the Morning Chronicle testifies that the Member from Buckinghamshire was at one time a Jew; at least that “he became a Jew outwardly, according to the customary and prescriptive rites of that ancient persuasion; for a most respectable gentleman (connected with literature) now deceased, has been heard to boast a hundred times that he was present at the entertainment given in honor of the ceremony.”

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Dr. GROSS, who has lately been appointed to the professorship of surgery in the medical department of the New York University, is a gentleman of very eminent abilities, who has long been conspicuous as a teacher and practitioner at Louisville.  He is a native of Berks county in Pennsylvania, is descended from one of the old Dutch families there, and was twelve or fourteen years of age before he knew a word of English.  In his specialite he is of the first rank in America.

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