Across a small park from the university, in which stands the inevitable statue of Guzman Blanco, is what is known as the “Palacio Federal,” bearing the inevitable marble tablet to keep before the minds of the people that it was erected by that “illustrious American.” It is the largest, handsomest, and most useless building in Caracas, and one of the finest in South America. Like all the rest of the improvements it stands upon confiscated ground, where once was a convent, the oldest and largest in the country, whose massive walls were stanch enough to endure the great earthquake of 1812. Guzman had a great time pulling it down, but he is a man of enormous will and energy, and when he resolves upon anything it is as good as done. The Palacio Federal is the Capitol of Venezuela. It covers an entire square of about two acres, built around a circular park in which are fountains, statuary, and beautiful flowers, and which is reached by grand archways on either side. Owing to an earthquake tendency in these parts the buildings in Caracas are never more than two stories high, and [Illustration: INTERIOR COURT OF A CARACAS HOUSE.] seldom more that one. This is the tallest structure in the city, having two full stories, with a wide balcony stretching around the interior walls. At one end is a lofty elliptical-shaped room, two hundred feet long, and from forty to one hundred in width, without a pillar. This is the place where official balls and receptions are held, and the Venezuelans are much given to that sort of thing. There is no carpet, the floor being of inlaid woods of different colors, and there has been no attempt at frescoing, and the walls and ceilings are of the most ghastly white, so that the furniture of gilt, and upholstered in the most gorgeous brocades and satins, has a somewhat startling effect. It is arranged, as all Venezuelan furniture is, in rows along the walls. This room is used as a national portrait-gallery also, and there is a collection of about sixty pieces, as good as one often finds and better than we have at Washington, representing the notable men in the history of the republic. On one side is a heroic portrait of Bolivar, and on the other one of Guzman Blanco, looking as grand and proud as if he had made the world. Guzman was the author and creator of this gorgeousness, and the people are not apt to forget it; but he was strictly impartial in making the collection of portraits, and if the men whose faces look down upon us were to meet in the room where their portraits face each other with fraternal cordiality, there would be such a carnival of blood and bruises as has never been seen since the celebrated encounter of the Kilkenny cats.