Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol II (1901).djvu/276

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Gallenga
264
Galt

grammar, but to jot down, lesson by lesson, whatever rules and examples might be required. These gradually developed into 'Mariotti's Italian Grammar,' of which Rolandi published twelve editions, with constant improvements, between 1858 and 1881. In 1859 he went to Italy as correspondent of the 'Times' with the French army, and remained five years in the country as representative of that journal. From 1859 to 1864 he was a deputy of the Italian chamber. He was with Garibaldi as a correspondent in 1860. In 1863 he was sent by the 'Times' as war correspondent to the United States, and held the same office in Denmark in 1864. In 1865 he was a special correspondent in various continental cities, and in the following year visited Spain. Between 1866 and 1873 he lived in London and wrote leading articles for the 'Times,' chiefly on foreign subjects, travelling abroad from time to time on special missions. The Cuban insurrection occupied him in the early part of 1873. In 1874 he was in Spain again; between 1875 and 1877 he lived at Constantinople as 'Times' correspondent, and in 1879 was entrusted with a fourth mission to Spain. The experience gained in most of these travels he recorded in book form. His connection with the 'Times' ceased in 1883, but his pen never was idle; his last work was a novel. He died at The Falls, Llandogo, 17 Dec. 1895, in his eighty-sixth year.

Gallenga was not one of the great special correspondents, but he achieved remarkable success as a journalist, when it is remembered that he came to that profession at the age of fifty, that he wrote in a foreign language, that he was naturally shy and diffident, without any of the qualifications of an interviewer, short-sighted, of poor memory for facts and faces, and of awkward manners. But he was a man of strong character, fond of travelling and seeing the world, full of observation, honest and straightforward, with great natural shrewdness and power of application. His command of English was remarkable both in speaking and writing; although he boasted that he had never opened an English grammar, by incessant painstaking he had acquired a lively and forcible style. He spoke Spanish with fluency and correctness. He was 'a typical Piedmontese, shrewd, tenacious, economical, and uncompromising' (Athenæum, 21 Dec. 1895).

Besides the books mentioned above he wrote:

  1. *'The Age we Live in: Bull and Nongtongpaw,' London, 1845, 8vo.
  2. *'Latest News from Italy,' London, 1847, 8vo.
  3. 'A che ne siamo? Pensieri di un' Italiano d'oltremonti,' Torino, 1849, 8vo (anon.).
  4. *'Scenes from Italian Life,' London, 1850, 8vo (tales, partly translated in 'Rev. Contemporanea,' 1858).
  5. *'Italy in 1848,' London, 1851, 8vo.
  6. *'A Historical Memoir of Fra Dolcino and his Times: being an account of a general struggle for Ecclesiastical Reform and of an Anti-heretical Crusade in Italy in the early part of the 14th Century,' London, 1853, 8vo.
  7. *'Country Life in Piedmont,' London, 1858, 8vo.
  8. ' Manuale dell' Elettore,' Siena, 1861, 8vo.
  9. ' The Invasion of Denmark in 1864,' London, 1864, 2 vols. 8vo (some of his letters to the 'Times' translated under the title of Krigen i Slesvig,' 1864, 8vo, Copenhagen).
  10. 'The Pearl of the Antilles,' London, 1873, 8 vo (Italian translation, 1874).
  11. 'Italy Revisited,' London, 1875, 2 vols. 8 vo.
  12. ' Two Years of the Eastern Question,' London, 1877, 2 vols. 8vo.
  13. 'The Pope [Pius IX] and the King [Vittorio Emanuele],' London, 1879, 2 vols. 8vo.
  14. 'South America,' London, 1880, 8vo.
  15. 'A Summer Tour in Russia,' London, 1882, 8vo (Italian translation, Parma, 1883).
  16. 'Iberian Reminiscences: Fifteen Years' Travelling Impressions of Spain and Portugal,' London, 1883, 2 vols. 8vo.
  17. 'Democracy across the Channel,' London, 1883, cr. 8vo (the same in Italian).
  18. 'Episodes of my Second Life,' London, 1884, 2 vols. 8vo.
  19. 'Jenny Jennett: a Tale without a Murder,' London, 1886, 2 vols. cr. 8vo.
  20. 'Italy, Present and Future,' London, 1887, 2 vols. 8vo (Italian version, Florence, 1886).
  21. 'Vini Italian!' (Esposizione Italiana di Londra, 1888), London, 1888, 8vo.
  22. 'Thecla's Vow,' London, 1898, cr. 8vo (a posthumous novel). Numbers 1, 2, 4 to 7, to which an asterisk is prefixed, were published with the name of Mariotti.

[Autobiographical Recollections in Gallenga's Episodes of my Second Life, 188i, 2 vols.; Men and Women of the Time, 14th ed. 1895, pp. 325–z6; Allibone's Dictionary, 1870, ii. 1219; Kirk's Supplement to Allibone, 1891, i. 644; Times, 19 Dec. 1895; Athenæum, 21 Dec. 1895, p. 873; Annual Register, 1895, p. 220; A. de Gubernatis, Dictionnaire International des Ecrivains du Jour, 1890, ii. 1017; A. Bertollotti, Passeggiate nel Canavese, Ivrea, 1867-9, 3 vols. 8vo; Edinburgh Review, April 1900.]

H. R. T.

GALT, Sir ALEXANDER TILLOCH (1817–1893), finance minister of Canada, was born at Chelsea, London, on 6 Sept. 1817, the youngest son of John Gait [q. v.] by his wife Elizabeth, only daughter of Alexander Tilloch [q. v.] His elder brother, Sir Thomas Gait (1815–1901), settled,