and I have never stopped there but some newsboy was at my side reading the same inscription. And the other of those Nathan Hales was never, I think, heard of by the reader of these lines till he reads them now. So far as fame goes, one of the two was taken and the other left, and the one who was taken was the one who thought he might be disgraced by the manner of his death. The dates are these:

General St. Clair abandoned Ticonderoga, 6th of July, 1777.

Battle of Hubbardton, 7th of July, 1777.
Battle of Bennington, August 16, 1777.
Battle of Saratoga, 19th of September, 1777.
Surrender at Saratoga, 17th of October, 1777.

In writing about New Hampshire I spoke of the battle of Bennington as belonging with Burgoyne's defeat at Saratoga. Colonel Creasy spoke of that as one of the fifteen decisive battles of the world. Bennington was in what was called the Hampshire Grants, which so soon declared their own independence and made Vermont a state which joined the old Thirteen when she chose.

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Senator Hoar used to tell a fine story of his first visit to Bennington. He made some mistake in leaving his hotel to go to see the monument on the battle-ground. But he fell in with a

ALEXANDER MACOMB, MAJOR-GENERAL U. S. A. From an engraving by J. B. Longacre of the painting by T. Sully.

little boy who became his guide. Hoar asked him some questions about the battle, and the boy was somewhat confused in his answers. He acknowledged that he was not perfectly

informed, saying, "What I know is that the Benningtons beat." The actual battle-ground was on the New York side of the state line.

There is another feather in the cap of Vermont, which her own people prize perhaps, but outside her own borders it is not referred to so often as is that battle where the "Benningtons beat." This feather was won the day of the double battle of Plattsburg, in 1814, when General Macomb with his little army drove back Sir George Prevost with the English army, and when McDonough, only thirty years old, with the American fleet, sank or drove back the English fleet. That was one of the battles of ship-builders, as somebody calls them-Henry Adams, I think — when the question was, which nation could get a ship to sea before the other. McDonough's fleet went out almost as Eneas's went out from Carthage, with the green leaves growing on the end of their spars. Macomb's army was made up of such soldiers as he found. He had fifteen hundred "effectives," by which he means soldiers enlisted by the United States. McDonough did

sink the great part of the English fleet, and drove the rest northward. On shore the English troops, before they made their main attack, heard the cheering of their American enemy on account of

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the defeat of the fleet, and so retreated treat which went as far as Canada. Of course the repulse was appreciated at the time, when, indeed, it was greatly needed in America, for

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the capture of the city of Washington by Ross's army had taken place about a fortnight before. The effect of this repulse in England was practically that it ended the war.

The Ministry asked the Duke of Wellington to come over to America and to take the command. His answer is a very interesting letter, showing that he understood the condition more completely than some of those people who called themselves "the Government."

"Had any considerations of personal glory . . induced me to pursue those offensive operations by land, independently of the fleet, which it would appear were expected of me," the results would have been disastrous, he says. Such operations have been attempted before on the same ground. And twenty-five years later he said that he "thought he sent them some of his best troops from Bordeaux, but they did not turn out quite right. They wanted this iron fist to command them." Condensing his various despatches declining to come over here and assume the command, it appears that we should