The population is over two millions and a half, and is gradually increasing, though the people, like those of New England, are greatly given to migration, and may be found in every part of the world. Its commerce and manufactures are, for its size, very extensive. They have increased, since 1814, from twenty-five to thirty per cent. Agriculture and the mechanic arts have been carried to a high degree of perfection. While the people are characteristically cautious and slow, "looking before they leap," to quote one of their favorite proverbs, they are bold and enterprising, and thus leap long and successfully. Few nations have accomplished so much in literature or trade, in science or the arts of industry. Their highest distinction, however, consists in their spirit of love and fealty, their leal-heartedness, their contempt of sham, their passionate love of freedom, their zeal for God and the truth! Obstinate and wrong-headed at times, characteristically dogmatic, and perhaps a little intolerant, their very faults lean to virtue's side, and go to the support of goodness. Their punctiliousness and pride, their dogged adherence to what they conceive to be right, and their vehement mode of defending it, constitute the rough and prickly bark which defends the precious tree. One thing is certain, they are transparent as daylight, and honest as their own heathy hills. They are preëminently a religious people, protestant to the backbone, occasionally rough and impetuous in the expression of their opinions, but never formal, never indecorous. A profound enthusiasm, bordering on fanaticism, a passionate, though not boisterous or canting devotion, a fine sense of the grand and beautiful, intermingled with a keen conscientiousness, an ardent love of freedom, with a boundless trust in God, form the great elements of their religious life. Their theology is chiefly Calvinistic, apparently philosophical and dogmatic, but rather less so than popular and practical. Of cathedrals, old and dim, of masses, chants and processions, the pomp and circumstance of a magnificent ritual, they have none.[2] But of old and glorious memories, solemn temples among the woods and hills, hallowed grave-yards, blessed sacraments, and national enthusiasm, they have abundance. Their religion is a part of the soil. It is indigenous to the country. It grew up among the mountains, was nursed by 'wizard streams,' and 'led forth' with the voice of psalms, among 'the green pastures of the wilderness.' Somewhat forbidding at first, like the rough aspect of the country, it appears equally picturesque and beautiful, when really known and loved. It is the religion not of form but of substance, of deep inward emotion, not of outward pretension and show. Neither is it a sickly sentimentalism which lives on poetic musings, and matures only in cloistered shades and moonlight groves; but it is a healthy, robust principle which goes forth to do and to suffer the will of Heaven.