on of stucco
into marble, painted pine into oak, and pseudo-Italian arabesques into
American frescoes and mosaics. Why should Congress itself be more meanly
housed than its Library?

This new Library of Congress is certainly the crown and glory of the
Washington of to-day. It is an edifice and an institution of which any
nation might justly boast. It is simple in design, rich in material,
elaborate, and for the most part beautiful, in decoration. The general
effect of the entrance hall and galleries is at first garish, and some
details of the decoration will scarcely bear looking into. Yet the
building is, on the whole, in fresco, mosaic, and sculpture, a veritable
treasure-house of contemporary American art. Even in this clear Southern
climate, the effect of gaudiness will in time pass off. Fifty years
hence, perhaps, when there are no living susceptibilities to be hurt,
some of the less successful panels and medallions may be "hatched over
again, and hatched different." But many of the decorations, I am
convinced, will prove possessions for ever to the American people. As
for the Rotunda Reading Room, it is, I think, almost above criticism in
its combination of dignity with splendour. Far be it from me to
belittle that great and liberal institution, the British Museum Reading
Room. It is considerably larger than this one; it is no less imposing in
its severe simplicity; and it offers the serious student a vaster quarry
of books to draw upon, together with wider elbow-room and completer
accommodations. But the Library of Congress is still more liberal, for
it admits all the world without even the formality of applying for a
ticket; and it substitutes for the impressiveness of simplicity the
allurements of splendour. It is impossible to conceive a more brilliant
spectacle than this Rotunda when it is lighted at night by nearly
fifteen-hundred incandescent lamps. Nor is it possible for me to
describe in this place the mechanical marvels of the institution--the
huge underground boiler-house, with its sixteen boilers; the
electrician's room, clean and bright as a new dollar, with its "purring
dynamos" and its immense switch-board; the tunnel through which books
are delivered by electric trolley to the legislators in the Capitol,
within eight minutes of the time they are applied for; and, most
wonderful of all, the endless chain, with its series of baskets, whereby
books are not only brought down to the reading room, but re