New Haven Daily Herald

CONGRESS,
Correspondence of the N. Y. Cour, & Enq.
WASHINGTON, Saturday night March 2.

At 11 o'clock to-day a very large concourse of people assembled at the President's house to join in the funeral solemnities of the late distinguished sufferers by the accident on board the Princeton. The ceremonies at the house were of the usual character. The only address that was made being a short, but very appropriate and impressive one, and by the Rev. Mr. Pyckson, chaplain to the Senate. It did not, however, partake at all of the character of an eulogy upon either of the deceased individuals; and the sad catastrophe with its melancholy results was presented only in its solemn aspect as an admonition to the living to be at all times prepared for death.—The ceremonies would have been much more impressive if, as is the custom in France on such occasions, some friend of each of the deceased had placed his hand upon the coffin of his friend and pronounced, from the fulness of his heart, a brief oration, of which the virtues and prominent features in the life of the deceased would have been the theme.

The procession was headed by the military consisting of volunteer companies and regular troops; all making a very handsome display. The number of carriages and hacks in attendance was large, and contained the Acting President, serving heads of department, foreign ministers, members of Congress &c. &c. The bodies of Mr. Upshur, Mr. Gilmer, and Capt. Kennon, the two latter covered with the national flag, were in hearses, distributed at intervals in the line of hacks in the order here set down. After these came an empty hearse, the body of Mr. Maxcy having been removed by his relatives to the burial ground of his ancestors in Maryland, and the hearse of Mr. Gardiner. But few persons on foot were attached to the procession. Minute guns were fired from several points during the ceremonies, and the bells in the District were tolled. The streets were crowded with a motley mass of the human species forming an aggregate much less respectable in its appearance than is usually seen on like occasions in New York. The whole number of persons, however, that joined in the ceremonies or were assembled as spectators would not, with you, be considered at all large. There might have been in all five thousand people. Many of the private houses along the Avenue were clad in mourning, and the doors and windows of all were crowded with sympathising and anxious countenances. The heavens were overcast and the atmosphere humid and in a slight degree chilly, combining with the other circumstances to make the day excessively gloomy, and to impart to every thing a sombre hue.

The day passed without any serious accident as far as I have learned. The horses attached to the carriage in which were the acting President and the junior members of his family, became unmanageable on the return from the burial ground, and ran nearly the whole length of the Avenue, but were stopped near the Treasury buildings by some blacks, and without any damage. As the carriage was passing down the street it was known that Mr. Tyler was in, but no one among the lookers on appeared to entertain any other feeling but curiosity—there was no apprehension of danger, his luck placing him beyond any such contingency.

AN OBSERVER.