Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 8.djvu/271

Rh was especially the post of danger, for it was that of the Sappers, a corps so constantly under the enemy's fire, and so frequently employed in the most perilous operations during the siege, that all its officers, and most of its men, were either killed or wounded. On two occasions he headed it in the attack as part of the forlorn hope, and on the last he was dangerously wounded. Besides active services, which are too numerous to specify, and in which his share was that of a fearless, indefatigable, and skilful inferior officer, he was employed on important commissions on the staff, and for several years held high charges in India, in the military engineer department, the last of which was that of member of the Military Board under its new constitution, to which he was appointed by the governor general, Lord William Bentinck. In this responsible office he so ably acquitted himself, as to be honoured, at his departure from India, with the highest approval of the governor-general in council. General Galloway's various services, during his military career, were also publicly acknowledged by several of our Indian commanders-in chief upon nine different occasions—by the supreme government of India on twenty-one, and by the Court of Directors and superior authorities in England on eleven—making an amount of distinction sufficient to show that he only required a separate command, and an opportunity, to raise his name to the highest rank in the annals of our Anglo-Indian warfare.

In authorship, General Galloway also obtained a distinction which will, perhaps, outlast the remembrance of his soldiership. At a time when such knowledge was most needed by our military governors and civilians in the East, he wrote a commentary on the "Mahometan Law," and another on the "Law, Constitution, and Government of India." He also wrote a work on "Indian Sieges," which was so highly esteemed, that it was reprinted by the Court of Directors, and used as a text book in their military college, as well as distributed for general use throughout our Indian army. In addition to these, he was author of several military treatises. He was nominated a companion of the Bath in 1838, and a knight-commander in 1848; and besides these public honours, he was elected a director of the East India Company in 1846, and officiated as its chairman in 1849. His death, which was sudden, being after a few hours' illness, occurred at his house, 18, Upper Ilarley Street, on the 6th of April, 1850.

.—This popular novelist and multifarious writer was born at Irvine, in Ayrshire, on the 2d of May, 1779, and was the son of a sea-captain, who was employed in the West India trade. The stay of young Galt in a district with which he afterwards made the world so well acquainted, was not long-continued, as his parents removed to Greenock when he was eleven years old. In this town of commercial bustle and enterprise, his education was soon finished, as he was destined to follow the occupation of a merchant; and by way of acquiring a proper knowledge of his future profession, he was, in the first instance, employed as a clerk in the custom-house of Greenock, and afterwards in a counting-house in the same town. This was unfavourable training for that life of authorship which he followed with such ardour in after periods; but his diligence and perseverance in self-education during the hours of leisure, not only formed the groundwork, but the incitement of his future literary undertakings. His first attempts, as is usual with young aspirants, were in poetry; and one of these, a tragedy, founded on the history of Mary Queen of Scots, he sent to Constable for publication, but had the MS. returned unread. He was