administration of the business of the nation at its capital; and year by year, better and more economical methods and results are achieved. No civil pensions have yet been established as the further reward of long and faithful service.

The Department of State stands first on the list, and occupies the south and noblest front of the State, War, and Navy Building --that towering pile of granite west of the White House, which has been so honestly admired by the populace and so often condemned by critics. The architect was A. B. Mullet, who had a great fondness for the "Italian renaissance," as is shown by the post offices of New York and Boston, and by other public edifices executed while he was supervising architect of the Treasury. This building is 471 feet long by 253 feet wide, and surrounds a paved court-yard containing engine-houses, etc. It is built, outwardly, of granite from Virginia and Maine, and the four façades are substantially alike, though the south front, where space and slope of the ground favors, has a grander entrance than the other sides. The building was begun in 1871 and not wholly finished until 1893, covers four and a half acres, contains two miles of corridors, and cost $10,700,000. It is in charge of a superintendent, responsible to a commission composed of the three Secretaries occupying it.

The Department of State has charge not only of all correspondence and dealings with foreign nations, but of the correspondence between the President and the Executives of the States. It is the custodian of treaties with foreign states, of the laws of the United States, the publication of which is under its direction; and of the Great Seal, which is affixed to all executive proclamations, to various commissions, and to warrants for the extradition of fugitives from justice. The Secretary of State is the "premier," in the sense that he is the first cabinet officer appointed, and first (after the VicePresident) in rank of succession to the Presidency in case of an accidental vacancy. His lieutenants are the first, second, and third assistant secretaries and a chief clerk, and the work of the department is divided among six bureaus, as follows: Diplomatic Bureau - diplomatic correspondence; Consular Bureau-consular correspondence; Bureau of Indexes and Archives-opening, preparing, indexing, and registering all correspondence, and preservation of the archives; Bureau of Accounts-custody and disbursement of appropriations, indemnity funds and bonds, and care of the property; Bureau of Rolls and Library—custody of the treaties, etc.; promulgation of the laws, etc.; care and superintendence of the library and public documents; care of the Revolutionary archives, and of papers relating to international commissions; Bureau of Statistics - edits and publishes the consular reports and the annual report to Congress entitled "Commercial Relations of the United States."

All of the apartments of the "foreign office" are elegant, and one fancies he sees a greater formality and dignity, as certainly there is more of studious quiet, here than in any other department. The Secretary and assistant secretaries occupy a line of handsome offices in the second story, looking southward across the park, among which is the long and stately room assigned to conferences with representatives of foreign governments, or similar meetings, and hence called the Diplomatic Room. An opportunity to inspect this should be accepted, if only to obtain a sight of the likenesses of the past Secretaries of State, with which its walls are almost covered. All of these portraits are by men of talent, and some are of superior merit: That of Clay, by E. D. Marchant, and those of Fish and Frelinghuysen, by Huntington, are especially praised. Lord Ashburton is here also, beside Webster- his great coadjutor in the adjudication of the boundary between the United States and Canada. This room,

the furniture, rugs, and hangings of which are dark and elegant, is said to have been arranged by Secretary Hamilton Fish. Near by is another elegant apartment- -the Diplomatic Ante-Room, where foreign dignitaries await audience with the premier.

The show-room of the department, however, is The Library, in spite of the fact that several curious objects, formerly exhibited there, are no longer on view.

The precious original drafts of the Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution were disintegrating and fading under exposure to the light, and have been shut up in a steel safe, after having been hermetically sealed between plates of glass, which arrangement, it is hoped, will stop their decay. A precise fac-simile of the Declaration, made about 1820, hangs upon the Library wall. The Great Seal and certain curious early treaties of oriental and barbarous states are no longer exhibited. Here may be seen, however, the war sword of Washington - the identical weapon he was accustomed to wear in camp and campaign; and the sword of Jackson, at New Orleans broken, to be sure, but mended by a skillful armorer, and not by himself at a blacksmith's forge, as the old story relates. Jefferson's writing-desk, Franklin's staff and buttons from his court dress, a lorgnette given by Washington to Lafayette, a copy of the Pekin Gazette, which has been printed continuously, as a daily newspaper, since the eighth century, and several other personal relics and historical curiosities will reward the visitor. An illustrated and interesting account of these and other treasures was published in Harper's Magazine for March, 1878.

The Library itself is a very notable one, equal to those of the governments of Great Britain and France in importance as a col

lection of books of international law and diplomacy. Cognate works, such as biographies, histories, and travels of a certain sort, supplement this central collection, and the whole now includes some 60,000 volumes. Its purpose is to serve as a reference library for the department. It also includes a great quantity of the papers of public men of the past, which have been acquired by purchase or otherwise, and are distinct from the correspondence archives of the department. For the papers of Washington (bound into 336 volumes) $45,000 was paid in 1834 and 1849; for the Madison papers (75 vols., 1848) $25,000; for the Jefferson MSS. (137 vols., 1848) $20,000; and for the Monroe papers (22 vols., 1849) $20,000. More recently have been acquired the papers of Hamilton (65 vols.), of Benjamin Franklin (32 vols., $35,000), and extensive records of the Revolutionary army.

The War Department has quarters in the same great building, occupying the western and part of the northern front, as is indicated by the cannons lying upon the buttresses of the porches. The Secretary and Assistant Secretary of War, the General of the army, and several military bureaus have their offices there, but none of them are open, of course, to the casual visitor. At the head of the staircase, near the northwestern corner, are models of certain arms and ordnance, and of wagons, ambulances, etc., and also two show-cases of life-size lay figures exhibiting the uniforms of various ranks in the Revolutionary army. The wall of the staircase is embellished with portraits of past Secretaries, and in the corridor and ante-rooms of the Secretary's office are other paintings, including grand portraits of Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan, by Daniel C. Huntington. The Washington portrait here is one of Stuart's copies from his original study.

The old Winder Building, on the opposite side of Seventeenth Street, erected many years ago by Gen. Wm. H. Winder, an army officer who distinguished himself in the early part of the War of 1812, and commanded the troops here in 1814, was intended for a hotel. It was taken for offices of the War Department, however, and has been so occupied ever since. In it General Halleck had his office and the staff headquarters of the army during the Civil War, Secretary Stanton's office being in the building demolished to make room for the present structure. The old" Ordnance Museum " has been abolished.

General Grant's Headquarters, when, after the war, he lived in Washington in command of the army, were in the large house with the high stoop on the opposite or southeast corner of Seventeenth and F streets. It is now a private residence. McClellan's headquarters during the early half of the war were at the northeast corner of Lafayette Square, now the Cosmos clubhouse (p. 127).