WILLLIAM D. GALLAGHER. [Born, 1808.] was discontinued on the completion of the thire semi-annual volume. Mr. GALLAGHER had now been for ten years the most industrious literary man in the valley of the Mississippi, and had done much for the extension and refinement of literary culture, but his labors were neither justly appreciated nor ade ed, near the close of 1839, an offer by the late Mr. CHARLES HAMMOND, to share with him the editorship of the "Cincinnati Gazette." With this important journal he retained his connection. until the whigs came into power in 1849, when his friend Mr. CORWIN, on being appointed Secretary of the Treasury, conferred on him the post of confidential clerk in that department, and he took up his residence in Washington. On the breaking up of the whig administration, in 1853, he removed to Louisville, Kentucky, where he was for several months one of the editors of the Daily Courier;" but the manly earnestness with which he denounced the crime of the jurors who acquitted the notorious murderer, MATTHEW WARD, led to some disagreement between him and his partner, and he has since resided on a plantation a few miles from that city. WILLIAM D. GALLAGHER, the third of four sons of an Irishman who came to this country soon afer the rebellion, near the close of the last century, and married a native of New Jersey, was born in Philadelphia, in 1808, and in 1816 migrated with his widowed mother to Cincinnati, which was then a filthy and unhealthy village. For three years he lived with a farmer in the neighborhood, attend-quately rewarded, and he therefore gladly accepting a district school in the winters, and in 1825 was apprenticed to the printer of one of the Cincinnati newspapers. From the beginning of his life in the printing office he wrote occasionally for the press, but preserved the secret of his literary habits until 1828, when the late Mr. BENJAMIN DRAKE made it known that he was the author of a series of letters from Kentucky and Missouri, which were attracting considerable attention in his Saturday Evening Chronicle." This led in 1830 to Mr. GALLAGHER'S connection with "The Backwoodsman," a political journal published at Xenia, where he resided about a year. In 1831 he was married, and became editor of "The Cincinnati Mirror," the first literary gazette conducted with much tact or taste in the western states. At the end of two years, the late Mr. THOMAS H. SHREVE joined him in its management, and it remained under their direction, through varying fortunes, until 1836. In that year Mr. GALLAGHER edited "The Western Literary Journal and Monthly Review," of which but one volume was published, and in 1837 The Western Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal," which had a similarly brief existence. In 1838 he was associated with a younger brother in a political newspaper at Columbus, the capital of the state, and there established The Hesperian, a Monthly Miscellany of General Literature," in which, during its first half year, he was assisted by the late Mr. OTWAY CURRY. The Hesperian" shared the fate of all previous literary magazines in the west, and 66 The poems of Mr. GALLAGHER are numerous, Various, and of very unequal merit. Some are exquisitely modulated and in every respect finished with excellent judgment, while others are inharmonious, inelegant, and betray unmistakeable signs of carelessness. His most unstudied performances, however, are apt to be forcible and picturesque, fragrant with the freshness of western woods and fields, and instinct with the aspiring and determined life of the race of western men. The poet of a new country is naturally of the party of progress; his noblest theme is man, and his highest law liberty. The key-note of Mr. GALLAGHER'S Social speculation is in his poem of "The Laborer." Ohio is without a past and without traditions; populous and rich as are her broad domains, in her villages still walk the actors in her earliest civilized history; and our author never strikes a more popular chord than when he celebrates "The mothers of our forest land," The Western Review and Miscellaneous Magazine," by WILLIAM GIBBES HUNT, was commenced in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1829, and published two years. "The Westeru Monthly Review," by the Rev. TIMOTHY FLINT, was commenced in Cincinnati, in 1827, and published three years. "The Illinois Monthly Magazine," was commenced by Judge JAMES HALL, at Vandalia, Illinois, in 1829, and having been published there two years, was removed to Cin- or sings of cinnati, where it appeared under the title of "The Western Monthly Magazine," until 1836, when it was discontinued. "The Western Quarterly Review," from which the facts in this article are mainly derived, was another illustration of the indifference with which the western people regard western literature. The first number appeared in January, 1849, and the second and last in the following April. The only successful literary periodical yet published in the valley of the Mississippi has been "The Ladies' Repository," a monthly magazine issued under the patronage of the "The free and manly lives we led, In the days when we were pioneers, But his best pieces, of which "August" is a spe Methodist Episcopal Church, for a considerable number of years, and edited with much taste and knowledge, by gen. tlemen appointed by the Conferences of that denomination cimen, are descriptive of external nature. He delights in painting the phenomena of the changing seasons, the sights and sounds of the forest, and the more poetical aspects of rural and humble life, and in all his pictures there is, with a happy freedom of outline and coloring, the utmost fidelity in detail and general effect. Mr. GALLAGHER published many years ago three small volumes of poems under the title of Erato;" they contained his juvenile pieces, his songs and romances of love, and other exhibitions of youthful enthusiasm; and in 1846 a collection :6 of the pieces he had then written which met the approval of his maturer judgment, under the simple title of "Poems." Two or three of his longer productions have since appeared in pamphlets; and a few of his best poems are quoted in "Selections from the Poetical Literature of the West," which appeared in Cincinnati, under his editorial supervision, in 1841; but there has not been published any complete or satisfactory col │lection of his works. In prose he has written orations and addresses and numerous and various magazine papers. CONSERVATISM. THE Owl, he fareth well In the shadows of the night, From the forest dim and old, As he courses round about, Disturbs no sleeping thing, That he findeth in his route. And the vale grows softly light; Poor fool! its resting-place. On the air his pinions play; It clothes him from the cold, And the shadows disappear; Feels the presence of a fear. He resists but all in vain! The clear light is not for him, So he hastens back again To the forest old and dim. Through his head strange fancies run: For he cannot comprehend Why the moon, and then the sun, Tip the heavens should ascend- When the old and quiet night, Of its stars, he'd ever keep. And he hooteth loud and long: But the eagle greets the dayAnd on pinions bold and strong, Like a roused thought, sweeps away! THE INVALID. SHE came in Spring, when leaves were green, And birds sang blithe in bower and treeA stranger, but her gentle mien It was a calm delight to see. In every motion, grace was hers; On every feature, sweetness dwelt; She bloom'd through all the summer days So lovely and serene its flow, But autumn winds grew wild and chill, Tones only of immortal birth Our memory of her voice can stir; With things too beautiful for earth Alone do we remember her. She came in Spring, when leaves were green, And birds sang blithe in bower and tree, And flowers sprang up and bloom'a betwee Low branches and the quickening lea. The greenness of the leaf is gone, The beauty of the flower is riven, THE EARLY LOST. WHEN the soft airs and quickening showers Of spring-time make the meadows green, And clothe the sunny hills with flowers, And the cool hollows scoop'd betweenYe go, and fondly bending where The bloom is brighter than the day, Of all that gem the rich array. Around us spring, and bud, and bloomAn angel from the blest above Comes down among them at their play, And takes the one that most we love, And bears it silently away. Bereft, we feel the spirit's strife; But while the inmost soul is riven, Dur dear and beauteous bud of life Receives immortal bloom in heaven. FIFTY YEARS AGO. A SONG for the early times out west, In the days when we were pioneers, The hunt, the shot, the glorious chase, The camp, the big, bright fire, and then Our wily Indian foe, In the days when we were pioneers, We shunn'd not labour; when 't was due We wrought with right good will; We lived not hermit lives, but oft And fires of love were kindled then, In the days when we were pioneers, We felt that we were fellow-men; By Heaven's upholding hand. And lifted up our hearts in prayer Our temples then were earth and sky; In the days when we were pioneers, Our forest life was rough and rude, Freedom we sought and found. But now our course of life is short; To our dim sight appears, Again be pioneers! Yet while we linger, we may all A backward glance still throw TRUTH AND FREEDOM. Os the page that is immortal, We the brilliant promise see: "Ye shall know the truth, my people, And its might shall make you free!' For the truth, then, let us battle, Whatsoever fate betide; Long the boast that we are freemen, We have made and publish'd wide. He who has the truth, and keeps it, Keeps what not to him belongs But performs a selfish action, That his fellow-mortal wrongs. He who seeks the truth, and trembles At the dangers he must brave, Is not fit to be a freeman He at best is but a slave. He who hears the truth, and places Bold in speech and bold in action Scorn the threat that bids thee fear: Speak!-no matter what betide thee; Let them strike, but make them hear! Be thou like the first apostlesBe thou like heroic PAUL: If a free thought seek expression, Speak it boldly-speak it all! Face thine enemies-accusers; Scorn the prison, rack, or rod; And, if thou hast truth to utter, Speak, and leave the rest to Gon! AUGUST. DUST on thy mantle! dust, Bright Summer, on thy livery of green! A tarnish, as of rust, Dims thy late-brilliant sheen: And thy young glories-leaf, and bud, and flowerChange cometh over them with every hour. Thee hath the August sun Look'd on with hot, and fierce, and brassy face; And still and lazily run, Scarce whispering in their pace, The half-dried rivulets, that lately sent Flame-like, the long midday, With not so much of sweet air as hath stirr'd The down upon the spray, Where rests the panting bird, Dozing away the hot and tedious noon, With fitful twitter, sadly out of tune. Seeds in the sultry air, And gossamer web-work on the sleeping trees; E'en the tall pines, that rear Their plumes to catch the breeze, The slightest breeze from the unfreshening west, Partake the general languor, and deep rest. Happy, as man may be, Stretch'd on his back, in homely bean-vine bower, While the voluptuous bee Robs each surrounding flower, And prattling childhood clambers o'er his breast, The husbandman enjoys his noonday rest. Against the hazy sky The thin and fleecy clouds, unmoving, rest. Beneath them far, yet high In the dim, distant west, The vulture, scenting thence its carrion-fare, Sails, slowly circling in the sunny air. Soberly, in the shade, Repose the patient cow, and toil-worn ox; Or in the shoal stream wade, Shelter'd by jutting rocks: The fleecy flock, fly-scourged and restless, rush Madly from fence to fence, from bush to bush. Tediously pass the hours, And vegetation wilts, with blister'd root, Faster, along the plain, Moves now the shade, and on the meadow's edge: The kine are forth again, The bird flits in the hedge. Now in the molten west sinks the hot sun. Pleasantly comest thou, Dew of the evening, to the crisp'd-up grass, As the light breezes pass, That their parch'd lips may feel thee, and expand, Thou sweet reviver of the fever'd land. So, to the thirsting soul, To where the spirit freely may expand, SPRING VERSES. How with the song of every bird, Some recollection dear is stirr'd Of many a long-departed hour, Whose course, though shrouded now in night, I know not if, when years have cast Of all the present, much is bright; Which burns before me constantly; Guiding my steps, through haze and gloom, To where Fame's turrets proudly loom. Yet coldly shines it on my brow; And in my breast it wakes to life None of the holy feelings now, With which my boyhood's heart was rife: It cannot touch that secret spring Which erst made life so bless'd a thing. Give me, then give me birds and flowers, Which are the voice and breath of Spring For those the songs of life's young hours With thrilling touch recall and sing: And these, with their sweet breath, impart Old tales, whose memory warms the bear |