From 1815 to 1864 the Library was catalogued on the system adopted by Mr. Jefferson according to Bacon’s Division of Science. This classification adapted to a small library was inadequate to the necessities of thousands of consulting readers. Mr. Spofford, on his advent as Librarian, went to work to simplify the system. The result was a complete catalogue of all the books in the great Library arranged alphabetically under the heads of authors. A proof of the perfection of this arrangement is, that any book hidden in the farthest corner of the most distant alcove is handed to a reader at the tables within five minutes after his application, while in the British Museum he would do well if he got it in the space of half an hour. Till the reign of Mr. Spofford, newspapers, as valuable documentary history, had almost been ignored by the guardians of the Library. This great defect Mr. Spofford has done much to eradicate and remedy. Files of all the leading New York dailies are now regularly kept. Some unbroken files have been secured, including those of the _New York Evening Post_, from its beginning in 1801, the _London Gazette_ from 1665, the French _Moniteur_ (Royal, Imperial, and Republican,) from 1789, the _Illustrated London News_, the _Almanac de Gotha_ from 1776, and a complete set of every newspaper ever published in the District of Columbia, including over one hundred now no more. Before the last progressive regime, even after Congress had appropriated $75,000 for the replenishing of the Library, the entire national collection did not contain a modern encyclopedia, or a file of a New York daily newspaper, or of any newspaper except the venerable _Washington National Intelligencer_. _De Bow’s Review_ was the only American magazine taken, “but the _London Court Journal_ was regularly received, and bound at the close of each successive year!” The Congressional Library is the only one in the world utterly fire-proof, without an atom of wood or of any combustible material in its miles of shelving. Before it attained to this indestructible state it suffered much. First from the British. On the evening of August 24, 1814, after the battle of Bladensburg, General Ross led his victorious troops into the Federal City. As they approached the Capitol a shot was fired by a man concealed in a house on Capitol Hill. The shot was aimed at the British general, but only killed his horse. The enraged Britons immediately set fire to the house which contained the sharp-shooter, who, it is said, was a club-footed gardener-barber Irishman. The unmanageable troops were drawn up in front of the unfinished Capitol, a wooden scaffolding, occupying the place of the Rotunda, joining the two wings. They first fired a volley into the windows and then entered the building to prepare it for destruction. Admiral Cockburn ascended to the Speaker’s chair, and derisively exclaimed: “Shall this harbor of Yankee Democracy be burned? All for it say ‘Aye!’”