It is about equally painful and amusing to witness the efforts which some men make to write down to the supposed capacity of a popular audience. The puerilities and buffooneries that are sometimes undertaken by these men, for the purpose of conciliating the crowd, certainly amuse the crowd, and so answer their end, though not in a way to bring reputation to the actors. No greater mistake can possibly be made than that of regarding an American lecture-going audience with contempt. There is no literary tribunal in this country that can more readily and justly decide whether a man has anything to say, and can say it well, than a lecture-audience in one of the smaller cities and larger villages of the Northern States. It is quite common to suppose that a Western audience demands a lower grade of literary effort, and a rougher style of speech, than an Eastern audience. Indeed, there are those who suppose that a lecture which would fully meet the demands of an average Eastern audience would be beyond the comprehension of an average Western audience; but the lecturer who shall accept any such assumption as this will find himself very unpleasantly mistaken. At the West, the lecture is both popular and fashionable, and the best people attend it. A lecturer may always be certain, then, that the best he can do will be thoroughly appreciated. The West is not particularly tolerant of dull men; but if a man be alive, he will find a market there for the best thought he produces. In the larger cities of the East, the opera, the play, the frequent concert, the exhibition, the club-house, the social assembly, and a variety of public gatherings and public excitements, take from the lecture-audiences the class that furnishes the best material in the smaller cities; so that a lecturer rarely or never sees his best audiences in New York, or Boston, or Philadelphia.