CHARACTER OF THE WESTERN PEOPLE.

THE Western man lives in a region of exuberant fertility, where Nature has scattered her blessings in unbounded profusion. The excellent laws which protect his liberties; the vastness of his country; its giant forests; its broad prairies; its mighty rivers; the rapid improvements he witnesses constantly progressing; and the bright prospects for a more glorious future in everything that renders life happy and ennobles character, in the midst of which "he lives and moves, and has his being;" all tend to deeply impress his character, to give him such a spirit of enterprise, such an independence of feeling, and such a full joyousness of hope, as is utterly unknown to the inhabitants of the older nations of the earth.

The character of the Western people, with a recital of some of the prominent causes which have given them their peculiarities, is thus given by one of their early and most popular writers.

The people of the West are as thorough a combination and mixture of all nations, characters, languages, conditions, and opinions as can well be imagined. Scarcely a nation in Europe, or a State in the Union, but has furnished us emigrants.

The much greater proportion of the emigrants from Europe are of the humbler classes, who come here from hunger, poverty and oppression. They find themselves here with the joy of the shipwrecked mariner cast on the untenanted woods, and instantly become cheered with the hope of being able to build up a family and a fortune from new elements.

The Puritan and the Planter, the German, the Briton, the Frenchman, the Irishman and the Swede, each with their peculiar prejudices and local attachments, and all the complicated and interwoven tissue of sentiments, feelings and thoughts, that country, kindred and home indelibly combine with the web of our youthful existence, have been set down beside each other. The merchant, mechanic and farmer, each with their peculiar prejudices and jealousies, have found themselves placed by necessity in the same society.

Men must cleave to their kind, and must be dependent upon each other. Pride and jealousy give way to the natural yearnings of the human heart for society. They begin to rub off mutual prejudices. One takes a step and then the other. They meet half way and embrace; and the society thus newly organized and constituted is more liberal, enlarged, unprejudiced, and, of course, more affectionate and pleasant than a society of people of like birth and character, who bring all their early prejudices as a common stock, to be transmitted as an inheritance to posterity.

The rough, sturdy and simple habits of the backwoodsman, living in that plenty which depends only upon God and Nature, and being the preponderating cast of character in the Western country, have laid the stamina of independent thought and feeling

deep in the breast of the people. A man accustomed to the fascinating but hollow intercourse of the polished circles in the Atlantic cities, at first feels a painful revulsion when mingled with this more simple race. But he soon becomes accustomed to the new order of things, and if he have a heart to admire simplicity, truth and nature, he begins to be pleased with it. He respects a people where a poor but honest man enters the most aristocratic mansion with a feeling of ease and equality.

But young as the country is, variously constituted and combined as are the elements of its population, there is already marked, and it is every year more fully developed, a distinctive character in the people. A traveler from the Atlantic cities, and used only to their manners, in descending the Ohio and the Mississippi in a steamboat of the larger class, will find on board what may be considered fair samples of all classes in our country. The manners so ascertained will strike such a traveler, as we have supposed, with as much of novelty, distinctness, and we may add, if he be not bigoted and fastidious, with as much pleasure, as though he had visited a country beyond the seas. The dialect, the pronunciation, and the peculiar and proverbial colloquy, are all different; and the figures and illustrations in common conversation strikingly so. The speaking is more rapid; the manner has more appearance of earnestness and abruptness; the common comparisons and analogies are drawn from different views and relations of things. Of course he is every moment reminded that he is a stranger among a people whose modes of existence and ways of thinking are of a widely different character from those in the midst of which he was reared.

Although we have been so often described to this traveler as a repulsive mixture, in the slang phrase,' of the "horse and the alligator," we confidently hazard the opinion, that when little accustomed to the manners of the better class of people among us, he will institute a comparison between our people and his own not unfavorable to us. There is evidently more ease and franknessmore readiness to meet and wish to form an acquaintance sufficient tact when to advance, and how far, and where to pause in this effort-less holding back, less distrust, less feeling-as if the address of a stranger were an insult or a degradation.

A series of acquaintances are readily and naturally found between fellow-passengers, in their long descents to New Orleans, very unlike the cold, constrained and almost repelling and hostile deportment of fellow-passengers in the Atlantic country.

On these voyages, where the boat glides steadily and swiftly along the verge of the fragrant willows, the green shores are always seen with the same glance that takes in the magnificent and broad expanse of the Mississippi. The passengers every day have their promenade. The claims of proscription on the score of wealth, family, office and adventitious distinctions of every sort, are laid aside, or pass for nothing. The estimation, the worth and

interest of a person are naturally tried on his simple merits, his power of conversation, his innate civility, his capacities to arouse, and his good feelings.

The distinctive character of the Western people may be traced, in its minuter shades, to a thousand different causes. Their forests and prairies concur with their inclinations and abundant leisure, to give them the spirit-stirring and adventurous habits of the chase. The early training to leave the endearments and enjoyments of home on voyages of constant exposure, and often of a length of more than five hundred leagues, will naturally tend to create a character widely unlike the more shrinking, stationary and regular habits of the people of the older country.

of

Thus a great proportion of the males of the western country, a relative standing and situation in life to be most likely to impress their opinions and manners upon society, have made the voyage of the Mississippi to New Orleans. They have passed through different States with men of different nations, languages, and manners. They have experienced that expansion of mind which cannot fail to be produced by traversing long distances of country and viewing different forms of nature and society.

The Religious Character.-The experiment is being made in this vast region of future empires upon a broad scale, which will test the question whether religion, as a national trait, can be maintained without legislative aid or a union with the civil power. Men are here left free to adopt such religious views and tenets as they choose, and the laws protect every man alike in his religious opinions. Ministers of the Gospel and priests, being presumed as devoted to humanity, charity, and general benevolence, are precluded by many of the State constitutions from any active participation in the legislative authority, and their compensation depends upon the voluntary aid of those among whom they labor in charity and love. In a wide country, with large districts yet sparsely. populated, there are comparatively few stationary ministers; yet there are thousands, embracing all denominations, who traverse the whole country, forming an itinerant corps who visit in rotation, within their respective bounds, every settlement, town, and village. Unsustained by the rigid precepts of law in any privileges, perquisites, fixed revenue, prescribed reverence or authority, except such as is voluntarily acknowledged, the clergy find that success depends upon the due cultivation of popular talents. Zeal for the great cause, mixed, perhaps, with a spice of earthly ambition, the innate sense of emulation and laudable pride, a desire of distinction among their cotemporaries and brethren, prompt them to seek popularity and to study all the arts and means of winning the popular favor. Traveling from month to month through dark forests, with such ample time for deep thought as they amble slowly along the lonesome horse-path or unfrequented road, they naturally. acquire a pensive and romantic turn of thought and expression, which is often favorable to eloquence. Hence this preaching is of

a highly popular cast, its first aim being to excite the feelings and mould them to their own; hence, too, excitements, or, in religious parlance, "awakenings" or "revivals," are common in all this region. Living remote from each other, and spending much of their time in domestic solitude in vast forests or wide-spreading prairies, the "appointment" for preaching is often looked upon as a gala-day or a pleasing change, which brings together the auditors from remote points, and gratifies a feeling of curiosity, which prompts them to associate and interchange cordial congratulations.

Religious excitements sometimes pervade a town or settlement, or even an extensive section of country, simultaneously. People in every direction are fired with a desire to be present at the appointed time and place of meeting. They assemble as to an imposing spectacle; they pour in from their woods and remote seclusions to witness the assemblage and to hear the new preacher, whose eloquence and fame have preceded him. The preaching has a scenic effect; it is a theme of earnest discussion, with apt illustrations, forcible arguments, and undaunted zeal. The people are naturally more sensitive and enthusiastic than in older countries. A man of rude, boisterous, but native eloquence rises among these children of the forest and of simple nature, with his voice pitched to the highest tones, and his utterance thrilling with that awful theme to which each string of the human heart responds, and while the woods echo his vehement declamations, his audience is alternately dissolved in tears, awed to profound ecstasy of feeling, or falling convulsed by spasms, attests the power of western pulpit eloquence.

In no instance are these effects more striking than at a regular camp-meeting." No one, who has not seen and observed for himself, can imagine how profoundly the preachers have understood what produces effect among the western people, and how well they have practiced upon it. Suppose the scene to be in one of those regions where religious excitements have been frequent and extensive, in one of the beautiful, fertile, and finely-watered valleys of Tennessee, surrounded by grand and towering mountains. The notice has been circulated for several weeks or months, and all are eager to attend the long-expected occasion. The country, perhaps for fifty miles around, is excited with the cheerful anticipation of the approaching festival of religious feeling and social friendship. On the appointed day, coaches, chaises, wagons, carts, people on horseback and on foot, in multitudes, with provision-wagons, tents, mattresses, household implements, and cooking utensils, are seen hurrying from every direction toward the central point. It is in the midst of a grove of beautiful, lofty, umbrageous trees, natural to the western country, clothed in their deepest verdure, and near some sparkling stream or gushing fountain, which supplies the host with wholesome water for man and beast. The encampment spreads through the forest, over hundreds of acres, and soon the sylvan village springs up as if by magic; the

line of tents and booths is pitched in a semicircle or in a foursided parallelogram, inclosing an area of two acres or more, for the arrangement of seats and isles around the rude pulpit and altar for the thronging multitude, all eager to hear the heavenly message.

Toward night, the hour of solemn service approaches, when the vast sylvan bower of the deep umbrageous forest is illumined by numerous lamps suspended around the line of tents which encircles the public area, beside the frequent altars distributed over the same, which send forth a glare of light from their fagot fires upon the worshiping throng and the majestic forest with an imposing effect, which elevates the soul to fit converse with its creator, God. "The scenery of the most brilliant theater in the world is only a painting for children compared to this. Meantime, the multitudes, with the highest excitement of social feeling, added to the general enthusiasm of expectation, pass from tent to tent, and interchange apostolic greetings and embraces, and talk of the approaching solemnities. A few minutes suffice to finish the evening repast, when the moon (for they take thought to appoint the meeting at the proper time of the moon) begins to show its disc above the dark summits of the mountains, and a few stars are seen glimmering in the west, and the service begins. The whole constitutes a temple worthy of the grandeur of God. An old man in a dress of the quaintest simplicity ascends a platform, wipes the dust from his spectacles, and, in a voice of suppressed emotion, gives out the hymn, of which the whole assembled multitude can recite the words, to be sung with an air in which every voice can join. We should esteem meanly the heart that would not thrill as the song is heard, like the sound of many waters,' echoing among the hills and mountains." The service proceeds. "The hoary orator talks of God, of eternity, of a judgment to come, and of all that is impressive beyond. He speaks of his experiences,' his toils, and his travels, his persecutions and his welcomes, and how many he has seen in hope, in peace, and triumph gathered to their fathers; and when he speaks of the short space that remains to him, his only regret is that he can no more proclaim, in the silence of death, the unsearchable riches and mercies of his crucified Redeemer."

"No wonder, as the speaker pauses to dash the gathering moisture from his own eye, that his audience is dissolved in tears, or uttering exclamations of penitence. Nor is it cause for admiration, that many who prided themselves on an estimation of a higher intellect and a nobler insensibility than the crowd, catch the infectious feeling, and become women and children in their turn, while others, who came to mock, remain to pray.

And who constitute the audience, and who are the speakers? "A host of preachers of different denominations are there, some in the earnest vigor and aspiring desires of youth, waiting an opportunity for display; others are there who have proclaimed the Gospel as pilgrims of the cross, from the remotest lakes of Canada on the north, to the shores of the Mexican Gulf on the south, and