In a report made by Doctor Samuel Latham Mitchell from New York to the House, January 20, 1806, he says: “Every week of the session causes additional regret that the volumes of literature and science within the reach of the National Legislature are not more rich and ample. The want of geographical illustration is truly distressing, and the deficiency of historical and political works is scarcely less severely felt.” President Madison always exercised a fostering care over the Library and an act approved by him, December 6, 1811, appropriates, for five additional years, the sum of one thousand dollars annually for its use. The whole number of books accumulated in fourteen years, from 1800 to 1814, amounted only to about three thousand volumes. The growth of the Library may be traced in the relative sums appropriated to its benefit by successive Congresses. In 1818, $2,000 were appropriated for the purchase of books. From 1820 to 1823, $6,000 were voted to buy books. In 1824, $5,000 were appropriated for the purchase of books under the Joint Committee; also $1,546 for the purchase of furniture for the new Library in the centre building of the Capitol. The yearly appropriation for the increase of the Library, for many successive years after the accession of General Jackson, was $5,000; these were exclusive of the appropriations made for the Law Department of the Library. In 1832 an additional appropriation of $3,000 was made for Library furniture and repairs. In 1850 the annual appropriation of $1,000 to purchase books for the Law Library was increased to $2,000. Within a year of the burning of the Library in 1851, $85,000 had been voted by Congress for the restoration of the Library and the purchase of books. The west hall of the New Library was completed and occupied July 1, 1853. It was designed by Thomas A. Walter, the architect of the Capitol. The appropriation for miscellaneous books alone in the years 1865 and 1866 amounted to $16,000. In 1866, $1,500 were set apart for procuring files of leading American newspapers, and the sum of $4,000 was voted June 25, 1864, to purchase a complete file of selections from European periodicals from 1861 to 1864 relating to the Rebellion in the United States. July 23, 1866, the amount of $10,000 was voted by Congress for furniture for the two wings of the extension. The present magnificent halls of the Library of Congress were built at an expense of $280,500. The main hall cost $93,500, and the other two halls $187,000. The last two have been built under the superintendence of Mr. Edward Clark. Beautiful and ample as these three halls are in themselves, they are already too small to hold the rapidly accumulating treasures of the Library. The next appropriation will take the Congressional Library out of the Capitol altogether into a magnificent building, built expressly for and devoted exclusively to the uses of the Grand Library of the Nation.