difficulties, and dangers they were constantly compelled to encounter, history furnishes but few parallels. But although every step of her progress, from the felling of the first tree in her dark wilderness to her final reception into the sisterhood of the states, was marked by the severest trials, yet the summer of 1777--the period to which the remainder of our tale refers--was, for her, far the most gloomy and portentous. And still it was a period in which she filled the brightest page of her history, and, at the same time, did more than in any other year towards insuring her subsequent happy destiny. In the beginning of this eventful year, the people of Vermont, by their delegates in formal convention assembled, had declared themselves independent-- “Independent of all save the mercies of God,” as the poet, who has furnished us the heading of this chapter, and who has so strikingly embodied the feelings of those he describes, has significantly expressed it. And having taken measures for publishing their declaration to the world, the convention closed their proceedings by appointing a committee, selected as combining the most happily an acquaintance with form and precedent with a knowledge of the ways and wants of the people, to draft a constitution to be submitted to a new convention, which the people were invited to call for that purpose. In response to that call, a new convention assembled at Windsor, in the month of July following, and proceeded, with that diligence and scrupulous regard to the employment of their time for which the early public bodies of this state were so noted, to take into consideration the important instrument now submitted to them as a proper basis on which to erect the superstructure of a civil government, suited to the genius and necessities of an industrious and frugal people--a people who, though keenly jealous of their individual rights, and exceedingly restive under all foreign authority, had yet declared their willingness, and even their wish, to receive and obey a system of legal restraints, if it could be one of their own imposing. For five days, from rising to setting sun, this convention employed the best energies of their practical and enlightened minds in discussing and amending the document before them. But their labors for the present, if not forever, had well nigh been lost, for, soon after they had assembled, on the sixth day of their session, and while they were intently listening to the reading of the instrument for the last time before taking a final vote on its adoption their proceedings were suddenly brought to a stand by the alarming news, loudly proclaimed by a herald, who appeared on his foam-covered horse before their open door, that Ticonderoga, the supposed impregnable barrier of frontier defence, had fallen, and our scattered troops were flying in every direction before a formidable British army, that was sweeping, unopposed, along the western border of