I am equally puzzled about the internal spaces of our great public buildings. When designed, they were supposed to be ample for centuries to come; but with the constant creation of new bureaus, and even of departments, with the fast and never-ceasing accumulations of records in every branch of the Government service, not a public building in Washington is now large enough to hold the archives, or even the _employés_ belonging to its own department. Already the city is filled with temporary buildings, in which the overflow of the various departments have taken refuge. Even now, every public building needs a duplicate as large as itself to hold its treasures, and to carry on fitly the intricate machinery of its routine service. The constant cry of “Capital moving” has not only prevented this, but has caused the precious records of the departments to be packed into precarious and insufficient store-houses. The public archives should all be stored in fire-proof buildings. The destruction of the titles to all the lands in the country sold by the Government would involve a loss greater than the cost of all Washington city. And yet, as they are stored at present, any morning you may hear that there is nothing left of them but ashes. What madness to talk of moving the Capital! What idiots to breed another dissension of a hundred years as to where another Capital shall be, instead of making the most and best of the majestic one, bought at such cost, that already is! Well, a day in the Patent-Office has caused this outburst. This building was built for the protection and display of the inventive genius of the country. But that genius finds itself fearfully “cabined and confined,” and almost crowded out by the elephantine proportions of the Home Department, which needs, almost beyond any other, a vast building of its own, all to itself. At first a single room was demanded for the Secretary of the Interior. The needs of his department were such, he has gone on annexing room after room of the noble Patent-Office, till its “inventive genius” finds itself crowded into a very small corner of the majestic building built with the proceeds of its own industry. March 3, 1849, Congress passed an act to establish the Home Department, and enacted that said new executive branch of the Government of the United States should be called the Department of the Interior, and that the head of said Department should be called Secretary of the Interior, and that the Secretary should be placed upon the same plane with other Cabinet officers.