Washington, May 12, 1861

There are plenty of spies In the very midst of the federal troops here and elsewhere, but there being no declaration of war made, they cannot be treated as spies, they must be proved to be traitors to their country and dealt with as such.  

At a battalion drill yesterday of the Fifth Massachusetts regiment, under command of Lieutenant Colonel Greene, a deep ditch was made in the suburbs of the City, over which the troops were exercised in charging, in order to accustom them to all the emergencies of actual service. Col. Greene and his command won much applause by their excellent and soldierly display.

Hon. Wm, H. Seward, Mr. Lincoln's Secretary of State, has forwarded to the Hon. Robert Toombs, Secretary of State of the Confederate States, a copy enclosed in a government envelope,…

We have from Mr. Whitaker, photographs, very recently taken, of General Beauregard, President Davis and Edward Ruffin, Esq, of Virginia, the eminent agriculturalist and secessionist.

General Beauregard has not a single Anglo-Saxon feature in his face. The whole tone of his countenance and attitude would lead any one to expect him to speak in some of the languages of continental Europe. It is a French face, but of the style of Cavaignac or Lamoriciere. It is of the solid type of Frenchmen.

The March of the New York Seventh Regiment—Ingenuity of the Massachusetts Eighth—Comparison Between Massachusetts and New York Volunteers.

The New York Times has a long account of the trip of the famous Seventh N. Y. Regiment, from New York to Washington, written by Fitz James O’Brien, the accomplished literattuer, author of “The Diamond Lens,” etc., who is himself a member of the Regiment. We copy the following:

“Gen. Scott has stated, as I have been informed, that the march that we performed from Annapolis to the Junction is one of the most remarkable on record. I know that I felt it the most fatiguing, and some of our officers have told me that it was the most perilous. The secessionists of Maryland had sworn that they would cut to pieces that regiment, and it was actually telegraphed all over the South that the threat had been accomplished. We marched the first eight miles under a burning sun, in heavy marching order, in less than three hours; and it is well known that, placing all elementary considerations out of the way, marching on a railroad track is the most harassing. We started at about 7 o’clock A. M., and for the first time, saw the town of Annapolis, which, without any disrespect to that place, I may say, looked very much as if some celestial school boy, with a box of toys under his arm, had dropped a few houses and men as he was going home from school, and that the accidental settlement was called Annapolis. Through the town we marched, the people unsympathizing, but afraid. They saw the Seventh for the first time, and for the first time they realized the men that they had threatened.

We learn through a gentleman of this city just returned from a tour in the West, that he witnessed some of the recruiting service now being conducted by the Administration…

There is a universal feeling of sympathy with these gallant fellows in their mortification at not being received here. They number one hundred men, all six feet high, and unfailing…