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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

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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,
Mid verdure or mid snow,

In the days when we were pioneers,
Fifty years ago."

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

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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,
And it puzzleth him to tell
Why the eagle loves the light.
Away he floats-away,

From the forest dim and old,
Where he pass'd the garish day-
The night doth make him bold!
The wave of his downy wing,

As he courses round about, Disturbs no sleeping thing,

That he findeth in his route.
The moon looks o'er the hill,

And the vale grows softly light;
And the cock, with greeting shrill,
Wakes the echoes of the night.
But the moon-he knoweth well
Its old familiar face;
And the cock-it doth but tell,

Poor fool! its resting-place.
And as still as the spirit of Death

On the air his pinions play;
There's not the noise of a breath
As he grapples with his prey.
Oh, the shadowy night for him!
It bringeth him fare and glee :
And what cares he how dim
For the eagle it may t?

It clothes him from the cold,
It keeps his larders full;
And he loves the darkness old,
To the eagle all so dull
But the dawn is in the east,

And the shadows disappear;
And at once his timid breast

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,
With its shadows dark and deep,
And the half-revealing light

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;
Thoughts soon became her worshippers-
Affections soon before her knelt.

She bloom'd through all the summer days
As sweetly as the fairest flowers,
And till October's softening haze
Came with its still and dreamy hours.
So calm the current of her life,

So lovely and serene its flow,
We hardly mark'd the deadly strife
Disease forever kept below.

But autumn winds grew wild and chill,
And pierced her with their icy breath;
And when the snow on plain and hill
Lay white, she pass'd, and slept in death.

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 birds to other climes have flown,
And there's an angel more in heaven!

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,
Ye pluck the loveliest blossom there

Of all that gem the rich array.
The stem, thus robb'd and rudely press'd,
Stands desolate in the purple even;
The flower has wither'd on your breast,
But given its perfume up to heaven.
When, mid our hopes that waken fears,
And mid our joys that end in gloom,
The children of our earthly years

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,
And our green old forest-home,
Whose pleasant memories freshly yet
Across the bosom come:
A song for the free and gladsome life
In those early days we led,
With a teeming soil beneath our feet,
And a smiling heaven o'erhead!
Oh, the waves of life danced merrily,
And had a joyous flow,

In the days when we were pioneers,
Fifty years ago!

The hunt, the shot, the glorious chase,
The captured elk or deer;

The camp, the big, bright fire, and then
The rich and wholesome cheer;
The sweet, sound sleep, at dead of night,
By our camp-fire blazing high-
Unbroken by the wolf's long howl,
And the panther springing by.
Oh, m rrily pass'd the time, despite

Our wily Indian foe,

In the days when we were pioneers,
Fifty years ago!

We shunn'd not labour; when 't was due

We wrought with right good will;
And for the home we won for them,
Our children bless us still.

We lived not hermit lives, but oft
In social converse met;

And fires of love were kindled then,
That burn on warmly yet.
Oh, pleasantly the stream of life
Pursued its constant flow,

In the days when we were pioneers,
Fifty years ago!

We felt that we were fellow-men;
We felt we were a band
Sustain'd here in the wilderness

By Heaven's upholding hand.
And when the solemn sabbath came,
We gather'd in the wood,

And lifted up our hearts in prayer
To God, the only good.

Our temples then were earth and sky;
None others did we know

In the days when we were pioneers,
Fifty years ago!

Our forest life was rough and rude,
And dangers closed us round,
But here, amid the green old trees,

Freedom we sought and found.
Oft through our dwellings wintry blasts
Would rush with shriek and moan:
We cared not-though they were but trail,
We felt they were our own!
Oh, free and manly lives we led,
Mid verdure or mid snow,
In the days when we were pioneers,
Fifty years ago!

But now our course of life is short;
And as, from day to day,
We're walking on with halting step,
And fainting by the way,
Another land, more bright than this,

To our dim sight appears,
And on our way to it we'll soon

Again be pioneers!

Yet while we linger, we may all

A backward glance still throw
To the days when we were pioneers,
Fifty years ago!

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
Its high promptings under ban,
Loud may boast of all that's manly,
But can never be a man!
Friend, this simple lay who readest,
Be not thou like either them-
But to truth give utmost freedom,
And the tide it raises stem.

Bold in speech and bold in action
Be forever!-Time will test,
Of the free-soul'd and the slavish,
Which fulfils life's mission best.
Be thou like the noble ancient-

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
A shout of gladness up, as on they went.

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,
And droop the thirsting flowers,
Where the slant sunbeams shoot:
But of each tall, old tree, the lengthening line,
Slow-creeping eastward, marks the day's decline.

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.
Welcome, mild eve!—the sultry day is done.

Pleasantly comest thou,

Dew of the evening, to the crisp'd-up grass,
And the curl'd corn-blades bow,

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,
Cometh the dew of the Almighty's love;
And the scathed heart, made whole,
Turneth in joy above,

To where the spirit freely may expand,
And rove, untrammel'd, in that "better land."

SPRING VERSES.

How with the song of every bird,
And with the scent of every flower,

Some recollection dear is stirr'd

Of many a long-departed hour,

Whose course, though shrouded now in night,
Was traced in lines of golden light!

I know not if, when years have cast
Their shadows on life's early dreams,
'Tis wise to touch the hope that's past,
And re-illume its fading beams:
But, though the future hath its star,
That olden hope is dearer far.

Of all the present, much is bright;
And in the coming years, I see
A brilliant and a cheering light,

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

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