CHAPTER XIV. A VISIT TO THE NEW LAW LIBRARY. How a Library was Offered to Congress—Mr. King’s Proposal—An Eye to Theology—The Smithsonian Library Transferred—The Good Deeds of Peter Force—National Documents—“American Archives”—Congress Makes a Wise Purchase—Eliot’s Indian Bible—Literary Treasures—The Lawyers Want a Library for Themselves—Their “Little Bill” Fails to Pass—They are Finally Successful—The Finest Law Library in the World—First Edition of Blackstone—Report of the Trial of Cagliostro, Rohan and La Motte—Marie Antoinette’s Diamond Necklace—A Long Life-Service—The Law Library Building—An Architect Buried Beneath his own Design—“Underdone Pie-crust”—“Justice” Among the Books—Reminiscence of Daniel Webster and the Girard Will. A little more than a month after the burning of the Library by the British in 1814, a letter was read in the Senate, from Thomas Jefferson at Monticello, tendering to Congress the purchase of his library of nine thousand volumes. The collection of this library had been the delight of Mr. Jefferson’s life, and, long before, he had written of it as “the best chosen collection of its size probably in America.” Pecuniary embarrassments had already begun to cloud his closing years, and the double hope of relieving these, and of adding to the treasures of his beloved Republic, impelled him to this personal sacrifice. In his letter to the Committee he said: “I should be willing indeed to retain a few of the books to amuse the time I have yet to pass, which might be valued with the rest, but not included in the sum of valuation until they should be restored at my death, which I would cheerfully provide for.” The sum of $23,950 in Treasury notes, of the issue ordered by the law of March 4, 1814, was paid him. The actual number of volumes thus acquired was 6,700. Although a Mr. King, of Massachusetts, more burdened with zeal than knowledge, made a motion which called out a loud and long debate, that all books of an atheistical, irreligious, and immoral tendency should be extirpated from the Library and sent back to Mr. Jefferson, the department of Theology in his library was found to be large, sound, and valuable. In 1866 the custody of the Library of the Smithsonian Institution, with the agreement of the Regents, was transferred to the Library of Congress. It brought forty thousand additional volumes to the Congressional Library.