ly maintained the
confidence of all on that side of politics with which he concurred,
(the old Republican,) and scarcely less conciliated the respect of his
opponents. He quickly obtained, for his skill, and not merely as a
partisan reward, the public printing of his State, and retained it
until, reaching the ordinary limit of human life, he withdrew from the
press. In the just and kindly old commonwealth which he so long
served, it would have been hard for any party, no matter how much in
the ascendant, to move anything for his injury. For the love and
esteem which he had the faculty of attracting from the first deepened,
as he advanced in age, into an absolute reverence the most general for
his character and person; and the good North State honored and
cherished no son of her own loins more than she did Joseph Gales. In
Raleigh, there was no figure that, as it passed, was greeted so much
by the signs of a peculiar veneration as that great, stalwart one of
his, looking so plain and unaffected, yet with a sort of nobleness in
its very simplicity, a gentleness in its strength, an inborn goodness
and courtesy in all its roughness of frame,--his countenance mild and
calm, yet commanding, thoughtful, yet pleasant and betokening a bosom
that no low thought had ever entered. You had in him, indeed, the
highest image of that stanch old order from which he was sprung, and
might have said, "Here's the soul of a baron in the body of a
peasant." For he really looked, when well examined, like all the
virtues done in roughcast.

With him the age of necessary and of well-merited repose had now come;
and judging that he could attain it only by quitting that habitual
scene of business where it would still solicit him, he transferred his
newspaper, his printing-office, and the bookstore which he had made
their adjunct in Raleigh, as in Sheffield, to his third son, Weston;
and removed to Washington, in order to pass the close of his days near
two of the dearest of his children,--his son Joseph and his daughter
Mrs. Seaton,--from whom he had been separated the most.

In renouncing all individual aims, Mr. Gales fell not into a mere life
of meditation, but sought its future pleasures in the adoption of a
scheme of benevolence, to the calm prosecution of which he might
dedicate his declining powers, so long as his advanced age should
permit. A worthy object for such efforts he recognized in the plan of
African colonization, and of its aff