"On the whole, it has been my fortune to know no man whose entire character has appeared to me so near perfection, none, whom it would so satisfy me in all things to resemble.
"How much we lost in him it is now impossible to estimate, and it would, perhaps, be useless to know. His early death extinguished great hopes. But his memory is a treasure, which even death cannot take from us."
Hon. Rufus Choate writes thus: "It happened that my whole time at college coincided with the period of President Brown's administration. He was inducted into office in the autumn of 1815, my Freshman year, and he died in the summer of 1820. It is not the want, therefore, but the throng, of recollections of him that creates any difficulty in complying with your request. He was still young at the time of his inauguration--not more than thirty-one--and he had passed those few years, after having been for three of them a tutor in Dartmouth College, in the care of a parish in North Yarmouth, in Maine; but he had already, in an extraordinary degree, dignity of person and sentiment; rare beauty,--almost youthful beauty, of countenance; a sweet, deep, commanding tone of voice; a grave but graceful and attractive demeanor--all the traits and all the qualities, completely ripe, which make up and express weight of character; and all the address and firmness and knowledge of youth, men, and affairs which constitute what we call administrative talent. For that form of talent, and for the greatness which belongs to character, he was doubtless remarkable. He must have been distinguished for this among the eminent. From his first appearance before the students on the day of his inauguration, when he delivered a brief and grave address in Latin, prepared we were told, the evening before, until they followed the bier, mourning, to his untimely grave, he governed them perfectly and always, through their love and veneration; the love and veneration of the 'willing soul.' Other arts of government were, indeed, just then, scarcely practicable. The college was in a crisis which relaxed discipline, and would have placed a weak instructor, or an instructor unbeloved, or loved with no more than ordinary regard, in the power of classes which would have abused it. It was a crisis which demanded a great man for President, and it found such an one in him. In 1816, the Legislature of New Hampshire passed the acts which changed the Charter of the institution, 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.