At eight o'clock last night Plymouth Church was full of the usual Beecher people, all ready for smiling enjoyment, and all convinced that the greatest intellectual treat of the season was forthcoming. A little after eight the Intellectual Treat appeared casually in the shape of a young man with reddish hair and a reddish mustache. The young man was attired in evening dress. His swallow tales were of orthodox fashion, but well sat upon. His pantaloons had the gloss of respectable middle age. His linen looked as neat as that of Mr. Beecher himself.

Entering upon the stage with a careless slouch, as much as to say, "Here I am, by the Grace of God and the American people, humorist," he was greeted by terrific applause. The audience recognized their Intellectual Treat at once, and they went for him.

"My, what a handsome young man to be a lecturer!"

"He's married over three millions of money, and lectures for fun."

"So he ought, if he's a funny lecturer."

"He isn't a bit funny now he's married."

"He's got a baby and that takes all the humor out of him."

Volleys of missiles such as these were discharged against Mr. Twain, sotto voce last night.

By and by he launched himself in the current of his discourse and slowly paddled his facetious canoe from eight o'clock till ten, or thereabouts. The voyage was chiefly one of anecdote, Mr. Twain premising that though he had promised to talk of

He alluded to the Pilgrim Fathers, from whom Ward descended, with marked disrespect and intimated that one of these ancestors of his own had taken three sides in the Battle of Bunker Hill -- or words to that effect. He promised to enter upon a long and minute description of his own family, but on witnessing the restiveness of the audience under this threatened infliction, he changed his mind and heroically forbore from doing so. His biography of Artemus Ward was perhaps remarkable rather for unaccuracy and inventive power than for strict historical truth, but he fibbed with such unction that the congregation -- beg pardon audience -- listened to the sermon with their sweetest Sabbath smile.

The anecdotes were some of them old and some of them new, one or two having evidently a more ultimate relation to Mr. Samuel L. Clements than to Mr. Charles Farrar Browne. They were all good, however, and the man who went empty and rueful away must have a very diminutive sense of the ridiculous.

In conclusion, Mark Twain pathetically alluded to the death of Artemus Ward, expressing himself with exquisite taste. This portion of his lecture bore evidence of the ripe scholarship and genuine feeling which underlie the humorous surface of Mark Twain's character. The lines, quoted, we believe, from Punch, in testimony to the geniality of his deceased fellow spirit, were rendered with remarkable power.

On the whole, the lecture, which was actually nothing but a discursive and pleasant bundle of stories, bound together by a cord of quaint fancy, heartily pleased the audience, who frequently testified, by their applause and their laughter, the satisfation he had occasioned.

Plymouth Church was crowded last evening, on the occasion of Mark Twain's lecture, by an audience who from the first manifested that they had come with the determination of being amused, and who at the close went away with the happy consciousness of having effected their object very satisfactorily. Mr. Clemens made his appearance on the platform shortly after 8 o'clock, and was received with enthusiastic applause, which was renewed at brief intervals throughout the evening. The subject of the lecture was "Artemus Ward," a genius whom Mr. Clemens evidently appreciated and admired. There was much in the style and manner of Mr. Brown as described and illustrated last evening that could be distinctly observed in the lecturer himself, whose own genius appears to be very closely akin to that of his lamented subject, while at the same time it is entirely original and genuine.

Mr. Clemens' lecture, so far as it can be produced without the important accessories of his quaint, apparently unconcerned manner and comical drawling tone, was substantially as follows: . . .