I have heard these sentiments again and again from the lips of some of our most devoted ministers at the west. The body of clergy that now come here are going to give character to the Church. They are engaged in the momentous business of _laying foundations_. We must look not only to the immediate, but future results of their labours. In almost all places, before any thing can be done a church has to be built. I had no conception till I entered this great valley of the difficulty of finding a place in which to assemble the people for public worship. Almost the first business to be done is to effect the erection of a church. The clergyman who can inspire such confidence in himself and awaken such a degree of interest, as to lead a western community to embark in such an enterprize, must have some tact and power. Another difficulty is to induce the people to attend church. Vast numbers here have fallen into the confirmed habit of spending their Sabbaths in another way. It is an effort for them to go to church. There must be some attractions in the minister to draw this class of persons out, and they are here a very large, and respectable, and influential class. A dull, sleepy, prosing minister is not the man for the west. In the afternoon we rode out to Walnut Hills to visit Lane Seminary, and pay our respects to Dr. Beecher. He received us with that frank, blunt cordiality, which I have so often experienced in New England, and which makes its rough and cragged hills more attractive to me than all the luxuriant fields of the west. The pleasure of our visit was not a little enhanced by the presence of Miss Catharine E. Beecher, who is widely known to the literary world through the productions of her gifted pen. I am sorry that my limits will not allow me to detail to you some parts of a discussion that we had upon several interesting topics--especially in reference to the present state of _the Presbyterian Church_, and of the best mode of diffusing light among the _Roman Catholics_. I certainly left Dr. B---- more than ever impressed with a high conviction of the brilliancy of his intellect, and the depth of his piety.