height of a hundred and twenty
feet from a base of forty-eight feet square. These flank a central
dome one hundred and twenty feet square at base and springing on iron
trusses of delicate and graceful design to an apex ninety-six feet
above the pavement--the exact elevation of the interior of the old
Capitol rotunda. The transept, the intersection of which with the nave
forms this pavilion, is four hundred and sixteen feet long. On each
side of it is another of the same length and one hundred feet in
width, with aisles of forty-eight feet each. Longitudinally, the
divisions of the interior correspond with these transverse lines.
A nave one hundred and twenty feet wide and eighteen hundred and
thirty-two feet long--said to be unique for combined length and
width--is accompanied by two side avenues a hundred feet wide, and as
many aisles forty-eight feet wide. An exterior aisle twenty-four feet
wide, and as many high to a half-roof or clerestory, passes round the
whole building except where interrupted by the main entrances in the
centres of the sides and ends and a number of minor ones between.

The iron columns which support the central nave and transept are
forty-five feet high, the roof between rising to seventy. Those of
the side avenues and transepts are of the same height, with a
roof-elevation of sixty-five feet. The columns of the centre space
are seventy-two feet high. In all, the columns number six hundred
and seventy-two. They stand twenty-two feet apart upon foundations of
solid masonry. Being of rolled iron, bolted together in segments, they
can, like the other constituents of the building, be taken apart and
erected elsewhere when the gentlemen of the commission, their good
work done and the century duly honored, shall fold their tents like
the Arabs, though not so silently.

A breadth of thirty feet will be left to the main promenades along and
athwart, of fifteen feet to the principal ones on either side, and of
ten feet to all the others. Narrow highways these for traversing the
kingdoms of the world, but, combined, they nearly equal the bottom
depth of the Suez Canal, very far exceed the five feet of the Panama
Railway, and still farther the camel-track that sufficed a few
centuries ago to link our ancestors to the Indies. The berths of
the nations run athwartship, or north and south as the great ark is
anchored. The classes of objects are separated by lines running in the
opposite direction. Noah ma