[PREFACE to Second Edition, last paragraph] : ... this is a mere local history. It pretends to do nothing more than to give an account of a small commonwealth. In order to do this effectually, it is necessary to present in a lively way, the incidents connected with our progress as a people, from the earliest existence of our government. Sketches of individualcharacter, of domestic life, pictures of "the age of home-spun,'' of the privations and the struggles which could tame the wild lands, wild men, and wild beasts of a new country, and sow its fallow ground with the seeds of civil and religious liberty, can alone "hold the mirror up to nature" and show us the very body and soul of our past.