1830-40.] WILLIAM D. GALLAGHER. 135 were then rescued from tke obscurity of suspended newspapers and magazines, in which their paternity had never been acknowledged. In 1842, Mr, Gallagher was nominated by the Whigs of Hamilton county, Ohio, as a candidate for the Legisla- ture, but declined to run. In 1849, he was the President of the Ohio Historical and Philosophical Society, and delivered the Annual Address on the " Progress and Re- sources of the North- West " — a discourse which is valuable to every student of West- ern history. In the year 1850, while one of the editors of the Daily Cincinnati Gazette, Mr. Gallagher proceeded to Washington, at the special invitation of Thomas Corwin, and took a confidential position under that gentleman in the Treasury Department. A continuous connection with the Western newspaper and periodical press, of full twenty years in extent, was then severed ; and although Mr. Gallagher remained in Washington City less than three years, and then returned to the West, it has not since been resumed, except tor a short period in 1854, when he was one of the editors and proprietors of the Louisville Courier. A few months after resuming his residence in the West, Mr. Gallagher moved upon a handsome farm which he had purchased in Kentucky, about sixteen miles from the city of Louisville, on the Louisville and Lexington Railroad ; and there, during the last five or six years, his time has been zealously devoted to agricultural and horticultural pursuits — pursuits that were the delight of his eai-ly life, and are now the solace and pride of his mature years. While thus engaged, Mr. Gallagher's pen has not been idle. Several of the highest prizes in agricultui'al literature, we notice by the olRcial reports, have recently fallen to his share, one of which was awarded for an elaborate essay on the interesting and congenial subject of " Fruit Culture in the Ohio Valley." He has, within the same time, written extensively for agricultural papers, and is now a regularly engaged con- tributor for two journals of that class. He has also projected several works connected with History, Biography, and Progress in the West, and is collecting materials for "A Social and Statistical View of the Mississippi Valley," from the period of its first settlement to the present day. This will be a large and comprehensive volume, and is designed for publication immediately after the completion of the national census for the year 1860. During his residence in Washington, Mr. Gallagher's time was too much taken up with the duties of his position for the frequent indulgence of his literary tastes. The poem entitled " Noctes Divinorum," is the only production of that period of which we have any knowledge. It was almost an improvisation, on Pennsylvania Avenue, transferred to paper immediately after witnessing one of those scenes of sin and suf- fering which are becoming nearly as common in the larger cities of the United States as in the corrupt capitals of Europe. Since his return to the West, at the close of the year 1852, Mr. Gallagher has published but little in the department of Belles-Lettres proper. Preserving an almost unbroken silence, through a long self-imposed seclusion, his name has died into an
