Institution as a pupil, graduating in 1787 with the highest honors of
his class. Immediately upon graduating he was appointed tutor, which
position he held four years. During his brilliant career of ten years,
in which he was the executive head of the college, men were educated and
sent out into all the professions, who, for learning, skill, and success
in life, will not suffer in comparison with the graduates of any period
since.

Dr. Maxcy resigned the presidency in 1802, when he was succeeded by the
Rev. Dr. Asa Messer, a graduate under Manning, in the class of 1790. He
held the office until 1826, a period of twenty-four years. Under his
wise and skilful management the college prospered; its finances were
improved; its means of instruction were extended; and the number of
students was greatly augmented. It was in the beginning of his
administration that the college received the name of Brown University,
in honor of its most distinguished benefactor, Hon. Nicholas Brown. This
truly benevolent man was graduated under Manning in 1786, being then but
seventeen years of age. He commenced his benefactions in 1792, by
presenting to the Corporation the sum of five hundred dollars, to be
expended in the purchase of law books for the library. In 1804 he
presented the sum of five thousand dollars, as a foundation for a
professorship of oratory and belles-lettres; on which occasion, in
consideration of this donation, and of others that had been received
from him and his kindred, the Institution, in accordance with a
provision in its charter, received its present name. Mr. Brown died in
September 1841, at the age of seventy-two. The entire sum of his
recorded benefactions and bequests, giving the valuation which was put
upon them at the time they were made, amounts to one hundred and sixty
thousand dollars.

Dr. Messer was succeeded in the Presidency by the Rev. Dr. Francis
Wayland, who was unanimously elected to this office on the thirteenth of
December, 1826. His administration extended over a period of
twenty-eight and a half years, during which the University acquired a
great reputation for thorough analytical instruction. His treatises on
"Moral Science," and "Intellectual Philosophy," were used as text-books
in other colleges, while "The Moral Dignity of the Missionary
Enterprise" gave him a world-wide celebrity as a preacher. He resigned
in 1855, when he was succeeded by the Rev. Dr. Barnas Sears, who
continued in offic