A TRIBUTE TO ARCHITECTURE. HONOR PAID TO THE BUILDERS OF THE DOME OF THE NATIONAL CAPITOL. WASHINGTON, _January, 1866_. The time has come when our wealthy citizens need not to go abroad to see the finest specimen of architecture of the kind in the world. Visitors to the shrine of St. Paul and St. Peter return westward and award the palm of superiority to the dome of the nation’s Capitol. Towering 300 feet from the base to the summit, its superb proportions unsurpassed in the world of art, at once attract the attention of all beholders, and, as the king of the landscape, it reigns supreme. But to see it in all its regal beauty it should be aflame of a night, with its innumerable gas jets; then it becomes in every sense of the word, a “mountain of light,” and shares the honors of the evening with the “Pleiades,” “Orion,” and the “Milky Way.” The Pharaoh who built the mighty pyramid of Egypt simply constructed his own monument, and in the same way the architect of the dome, a citizen of good old Philadelphia, has woven his name into a fragment of the web of Time. Thomas U. Walter--do you know him?--the man who held this mighty tower in his brain, in all its perfection, long, long before it ever saw the light of day. When you and I, dear reader, are not so much as a pinch of dust--when the names of Washington and Lincoln are as remote as the sages who lived before Christ--the great architects of the world will live, whether they sprung from the tawny mud of the Nile, the soil of classic Greece, or the rich vegetable mould of the western hemisphere. Previous to 1856 a dome had been constructed of brick, stone, and wood, sheathed in copper. Its height was 145 feet from the ground. This was torn away to give place to the present structure, which is composed entirely of iron and glass. At the commencement of the rebellion the labor of completing the dome was progressing rapidly. Strangers visiting Washington will remember what seemed to look like acres of ground strewn with immense piles of iron. Facing the east and west fronts of the Capitol, immense timbers were raised to fearful heights, to which pulleys and ropes were attached that looked strong enough to lift the world. Weather permitting--for workmen had to lie by for either wind or rain--little black objects might be seen crawling in and out, building up a nest after the most approved waspish fashion. A closer inspection showed these to be workmen. Now let Charles Fowler, esq., one of the firm of New York builders, tell his story: