Had John Wheelock presented his grievances to the National Legislature,--only in a limited sense, it is true, if at all, the successor of that king, whose grant of Landaff, in addition to the College Charter, made him, in a sense, according to Coke, the founder of the college,--he might, in all probability, have obtained what he desired in a peaceful manner, although an important judicial decision might never have occupied its present place in American law. CHAPTER XIII. CHARACTER OF PRESIDENT BROWN.--TRIBUTES BY PROFESSOR HADDOCK AND RUFUS CHOATE. In Sprague's "Annals of the American Pulpit," we find, in substance, the following notice of President Brown: Francis Brown was the son of Benjamin and Prudence (Kelley) Brown, and was born at Chester, Rockingham County, N. H., January 11, 1784. His father was a merchant, and had a highly respectable standing in society. His mother was a person of superior intellect and heart, and, though she died when he had only reached his tenth year, she had impressed upon him some of the most striking of her own characteristics; particularly her uncommon love of order and propriety, even in the most minute concerns, and her uncompromising adherence to her own convictions of truth and right. In his early boyhood he evinced the utmost eagerness in the pursuit of knowledge, and never suffered any opportunity for intellectual improvement to escape him. At the age of fourteen, he ventured to ask his father to furnish him with the means of a collegiate education; but, in consideration of his somewhat straitened circumstances, he felt constrained to deny the request. By a subsequent marriage, however, his circumstances were improved; and the new mother of young Brown, with most commendable generosity, assumed the pecuniary responsibility of his going to college. He always cherished the most grateful recollection of her kindness; and, but a few days before his death, he said to her with the deepest filial sensibility, "My dear mother, whatever good I have done in the world, and whatever honor I have received, I owe it all to you." In his sixteenth year he became a member of Atkinson Academy, then under the care of the Hon. John Vose, and among the most respectable institutions of the kind in New England. His instructor has rendered the following testimony concerning him at that period: "Though he made no pretensions to piety during his residence at the academy, he was exceedingly amiable in his affections and moral in his deportment. It is very rare we find an individual in whom so many excellencies centre. To a sweet disposition was united a strong mind; to an accuracy which examined the minutiæ of everything a depth of investigation which penetrated the most profound. I recollect that when I wrote recommending him to college, I informed Dr. Wheelock I had sent him an Addison."