ution, abolished the old corporation of Trustees, created
a new one, extinguished the legal identity of the college, and
reconstructed it or set up another under a different and more
ambitious name and a different government. The old Trustees, with
President Brown at their head, denied the validity of these acts, and
resisted their administration. A dominant political party had passed
or adopted them; and thereupon a controversy arose between the college
and a majority of the State; conducted in part in the courts of law of
New Hampshire, and of the Union; in part by the press; sometimes by
the students of the old institution and the new in personal collision,
or the menace of personal collision, within the very gardens of the
academy; which was not terminated until the Supreme Court of the
United States adjudged the acts unconstitutional and void. This
decision was pronounced in 1819; and then, and not till then, had
President Brown peace,--a brief peace made happy by letters, by
religion, by the consciousness of a great duty performed for law, for
literature, and for the Constitution,--happy even in prospect of
premature death. This contest tried him and the college with extreme
and various severity. To induce students to remain in a school
disturbed and menaced; to engage and inform public sentiment, the true
patron and effective founder, by showing forth that the principles of
a sound political morality, as well as of law, prescribed the action
of the old Trustees; to confer with the counsel of the college, two of
whom--Mr. Mason and Mr. Webster--have often declared to me their
admiration of the intellectual force and practical good sense which he
brought to those conferences,--this all, while it withdrew him
somewhat from the proper studies and proper cares of his office,
created a necessity for the display of the very rarest qualities of
temper, discretion, tact, and command, and he met it with consummate
ability and fortune. One of his addresses to the students in the
chapel at the darkest moment of the struggle, presenting the condition
and prospects of the college, and the embarrassments of all kinds
which surrounded its instructors, and appealing to the manliness and
affection and good principles of the students to help 'by whatsoever
things were honest, lovely, or of good report,' occurs to recollection
as of extraordinary persuasiveness and influence.

"There can be no doubt that he had very eminent intellec