Again we touched the hand of the lady hostess, and then all was over. OLIVIA. IN THE ARENA OF THE SENATE. MESSRS. NYE AND DOOLITTLE CROSS BLADES IN IDEAS AND ARGUMENTS. WASHINGTON, _January 26, 1868_. Again the Senate chamber recalls the early days of the rebellion, or rather the last stormy winter before its culmination. The galleries are densely crowded; the voice of eloquence is heard ringing in clarion notes through the hall; but in place of the handsome, sneering face of Breckinridge as presiding officer, rare old Ben Wade rises, like a sun of promise, to light up the troubled waters, and to help warn the ship of the Republic off the rocky shore. Scarcely a drop in the river of time since haughty Wigfall arose, and, with right hand clenched defiantly in the face of the Republican side, his flaming eye resting upon Charles Sumner, declared that he owed no allegiance to the Government of the United States. It was the forked flames licking the marble column, for Senator Sumner sat calm and immovable as the figure of Fate. Gone, too, is Davis, the man of destiny; and Toombs, the swaggering braggart, with silver-voiced Benjamin, the only human being endowed with the same melodious, flute-like tongue that bewitched our dear first mother. And yet there is treason enough left to act as leaven in case Senator Doolittle and the President succeed in introducing it into the loaf of reconstruction. To-day two of the most warlike as well as two of the most powerful men in the Senate have been engaged in real battle; but instead of muscle against muscle, the air has been filled with javelins of arguments and ideas. Let the pen be content with describing the two combatants--Senator Doolittle, of Wisconsin, and Senator Nye, of Nevada. The battle, like Massachusetts, speaks for itself. Senator Doolittle, the President’s spirit of darkness, bears the same relation to the human race that a bull-dog does to the canine species. His arguments are tough and sharp as a row of glittering teeth, and would do the same horrible execution if the President and small party of barking Democracy at his heels were strong enough to tell him “to go in and win.” Rather above the medium height, built for strength, like a Dutch clipper, with close cropped hair and broad, projecting lower jaw, it must have been an accident that made him let go of the Republican platform, or he must have been choked off by a power entirely beyond his control. But now that he is fast hold of a different faith; no resolution of a Wisconsin senate, no bitter protest of an indignant, injured constituency, can shake him one hair’s breadth. And to this powerful makeup a pair of glistening steel-gray eyes, a presence easier felt than described, and you have plenty of material out of which to construct a triple-headed Cerebus strong enough to guard the gates of--even the Executive mansion.