Again turn we to Washington—that mighty capital, that great political heart of our Union, from whose pulsations are supplied the entire arteries of our body politic. It was the memorable session of 1840, when the halls of legislation were turned into a hustings, and Whig and Democrat broke their lances in defence of Harrison or Van Buren, as their political predilections dictated; that session, when grave legislators took an inventory of the furniture of the presidential mansion, from the “gold spoons” down to the napkins of the pantry; when the horrors of a standing army were so vividly displayed, and guns, bayonets, and boarding-pikes bristled out from every line of Mr. Secretary Poinsett’s annual report from the War Department; when the conqueror of Proctor, and the victor at Tippecanoe was proved a “granny” and a “coward,” by men who had never smelt gunpowder in their lives, save in the homœopathic compounds of their boyish squibs and India crackers; when both parties succeeded, by most overwhelming arguments, in convincing their friends that the country would “go to the bow wows,” if their antagonists succeeded; when the halls of legislation were stripped of every leaf, branch and limb, of their original design, and the hickory and the buckeye were formed in fantastic garlands around “the stump” which alone remained; when blood-hounds and conscience-keepers, tabourets and petticoats, British gold and bank bribes, were household and familiar words; when every man, woman, and child, was possessed of the devil of partisan malignity, and we staid United Staters, sang songs, drank hard cider, held conventions, got up torch-light processions, and shouted for our candidates as if Bedlam had been keeping holyday, with its inmates all out electioneering.