He was eminent as a teacher. Through life he gladly embraced every opportunity of opening the treasuries of knowledge to his fellow-men; and many who sat under his instruction were thereby laid under large obligations, although, in the rude halls of the infant college, he was always more or less embarrassed by the cares of business and the infirmities of advancing years. He was eminent in affairs. He raised funds; procured corporate franchises and safeguards; leveled forests, and reared edifices in the face of apathy, opposition, and rivalry, with a fertility of resources in planning, and an energy in executing, which won the admiration of contemporaries in both hemispheres. He was eminent as a patriot. When his faithful friend, the last Royal Governor of New Hampshire, upon whom through years of toil and trial he had leaned as upon a strong staff, abandoned his office, and resolutely adhered to his Sovereign, and many others to whom he was strongly attached, arrayed themselves on the same side, he as resolutely espoused the cause of American Independence, and labored to the extent of his ability for its accomplishment. But neither the scholar, nor the orator, nor the teacher, nor the man of affairs, nor the patriot, nor all combined, would have secured to any man that conspicuous position upon the page of history which the leading founder of Dartmouth College will occupy, so long as solid worth and successful achievement shall command the attention of the discriminating, thoughtful reader. Religion was the mainspring of his entire life, the real source of all his success. Without it, he might have been honored of men; with it, he was honored of God. Encircling all the separate parts of his character, like a golden chain, it bound them in one grand, beautiful, harmonious whole. In the hallowed seclusion of that thrice-honored valley, where Jonathan Edwards was born and Thomas Hooker died,--on the western verge of that modest plain, where his long and fruitful life bore its latest, richest fruit,--his precious dust will slumber "till the heavens be no more," and not till then will the Christian scholar, who lingers among the hills of central New England, cease to pay his devotions at the grave of Eleazar Wheelock. CHAPTER X. PROGRESS DURING THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE SECOND PRESIDENT, JOHN WHEELOCK. The first President of the College, availing himself of a provision in the Charter, named three persons in his will, some one of whom he desired should be his successor in the office. These were his son, Mr. John Wheelock, Rev. Joseph Huntington, of Coventry, Conn., and Prof. Sylvanus Ripley. Mr. Wheelock, although a young man, in response to the somewhat earnest solicitation of the Trustees, after mature deliberation decided to accept the position. His son-in-law, Rev. Dr. Allen, gives the leading points in his earlier life in the following language: