Among ministers, no name has been more widely known than that of Beecher--first, Lyman Beecher, and afterwards his brilliant son, Henry Ward Beecher. Lyman Beecher was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1775, the son of a blacksmith, and his youth was spent between blacksmithing and farming. His love of books soon manifested itself, however, and means were found to prepare him for Yale, where he graduated at the age of twenty-two. A further year of study enabled him to enter the ministry. For sixteen years, he was pastor of the Congregational church at Litchfield, Connecticut, and soon took rank as the leading clergyman of his denomination. His eloquence, zeal and courage won a wide reputation, and in 1832, he was offered the presidency of the newly-organized Lane seminary, at Cincinnati. This place he held for twenty years, and his name was continued as president in the seminary catalogue, until his death. Soon after he assumed this position, the slavery question began to assume the acute phase which ended in the Civil War. Mr. Beecher was, of course, an Abolitionist, and for a time lived in a turmoil, for many of the seminary students were from the south, while Cincinnati itself was so near the borderline that there was a great pro-slavery sentiment there. But during Mr. Beecher's absence, his trustees tried to allay excitement and, in a way, carry water on both shoulders, by forbidding all further discussion of slavery in the seminary, and succeeded in nearly wrecking the institution, for the students withdrew in a body, and while a few were persuaded to return, the great majority refused to do so and laid the foundation of Oberlin College. For seventeen years, Mr. Beecher labored to restore the seminary's prosperity, but finally abandoned the task in despair. He resigned the presidency in 1852, intending to devote his remaining years to the revision and publication of his works, but a paralytic stroke put an end to his active career.