Scarcely has the day dawned upon the Fortieth Congress before it is our unpleasant task to chronicle its decline. As we say about the month that gave it birth, “it came in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.” At the beginning of the session mutterings of impeachment growled and thundered in the political horizon, but for some unaccountable but wise reason it has all subsided, and the passing away is peculiarly quiet and lamb-like. It almost reminds one of a young maiden dying because of the loss of a recreant lover. The Judiciary Committee are expected to sit all summer on the impeachment eggs; but no woman is so unwise as to count the chickens before they are hatched. It is said that Congress has tied the hands of the President so that he is perfectly incapable of doing any more mischief, and the members go home, and leave Washington desolate. Washington is a live city. It has two states of existence, sleeping and waking. When Congress is in session it is wide awake; when Congress adjourns it goes to sleep, and then woe to the unfortunate letter-writer, for her occupation is gone--everything is gone--the great men, the fashionable women; the great dining-room in the principal hotels are all closed, small eating houses disappear; even stores of respectable size draw in their principal show windows, which proves to the world that they were only “branches” thrown out from the original bodies, which can be found either in Philadelphia or New York, and that the branches never were expected to take root in Washington. Only the clerks in office, the real honey bees in the great national hive, work, and work incessantly, and keep Washington from degenerating into an enchanted city, such as we read about in the Arabian tales.