FREDERICK WILLIAM THOMAS is a native of South Carolina. He was born at Charleston, in the year 1811. His father, E. S. Thomas—a nephew of Isaiah Thomas, author of "The History of Printing"—was then the proprietor of the Charleston City Gazette. In 1816, Mr. Thomas sold the Gazette and removed to Baltimore. Frederick William was there educated. In early life he met with an accident which so seriously injured his left leg that he has ever since been required to use a cane or crutch. In consequence of that misfortune he was never a regular student at school, but he was naturally inclined to reading and thinking, and was judiciously directed and encouraged by his relatives. At the age of seventeen he began the study of law, and when not more than eighteen years old, wrote a political satire in verse, which caused the office of the newspaper, in which it was published, to be demolished by a mob.

In 1829 his father emigrated from Baltimore to Cincinnati, and established, in the latter city, the Daily Commercial Advertiser. The following year, Frederick William gave up the law practice which, among kind friends, he had just begun in Baltimore, determined to try his fortune in the far West. Soon after he arrived in Cincinnati, he published, in the Commercial Advertiser, a number of stanzas of a poem written while he was descending the Ohio River. In 1832 the entire poem was delivered in the hall of the Young Men's Lyceum, and was spoken of as a very creditable performance by Charles Hammond, in the Cincinnati Gazette. This, with other favorable notices, induced the author to offer it for publication, and it was issued in a neat pamphlet of forty-eight duodecimo pages, by Alexander Flash, in 1833. It was called "The Emigrant," and was dedicated to Charles Hammond. Extracts from it have found their way into many magazines and newspapers of large circulation, and into popular school books. Mr. Thomas assisted his father in the editorial management of the Advertiser, and wrote frequently for other local journals. His very popular song, "'Tis said that Absence conquers Love," was contributed to the Cincinnati American in July, 1831. In 1834, Mr. Thomas engaged with John B. Dillon and L. Sharp in the publication of The Democratic Intelligencer, a daily, tri-weekly and weekly journal, which advocated the claims of John McLean as a candidate for the office of President of the United States. The Intelligencer had a brief career, and Mr. Thomas, in 1835, assisted his father in the editorial conduct of the Daily Evening Post, a journal which succeeded the Daily Advertiser. The Post was distinguished for encouraging notices of artists and authors, and for earnest advocacy of enterprises calculated to enhance the business interests of the city, but its financial affairs were poorly managed, and it was discontinued in 1839.

About the time he became one of the editors of the Post, Mr. Thomas had finished "Clinton Bradshaw," a novel, which was published by Carey, Lea and Blanchard, in Philadelphia, in the autumn of 1835. The next year he wrote "East and West;" and in 1837 "Howard Pinckney." These novels were also published in Philadelphia by the firm which brought out "Clinton Bradshaw," but neither of them was as popular as that work, which was received with marked favor, on account of its admirable delineations of peculiar characters. It was republished at Cincinnati, by Robinson and Jones, in 1848.

Between 1835 and 1840, Mr. Thomas wrote, for the Cincinnati Mirror, for the Weekly Chronicle, and for the Hesperian, numerous poems and sketches. Several of those sketches are included in a volume entitled "John Randolph of Roanoke, and other Public Characters," a duodecimo volume, published in Philadelphia in 1853. In 1840, Mr. Thomas "took the stump" in Ohio for William Henry Harrison, as a candidate for the Presidency, and won friends as a popular orator. Since that time he has lectured extensively with much success on "Eloquence," on "Early struggles of Eminent Men," and other popular topics. In 1841, Thomas Ewing, Secretary of the United States Treasury, appointed Mr. Thomas to select a library for that department of Government, which duty he discharged with credit to himself and the department. He resided in Washington till 1850, when he returned to Cincinnati, and was, for a brief period, a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church. He was afterward Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature in the Alabama University, but having determined to resume the practice of his legal profession, settled at Cambridge, Maryland, in 1858. In the early part of 1860 he was induced, however, to put on again the editorial harness, and now conducts the literary department of the Richmond (Virginia) Enquirer.

Perhaps the secret of the irregular pursuit of the profession chosen in his youth, which our sketch of Mr. Thomas's career exhibits, was given by him in a stanza of the "Emigrant:"

"Soon must I mingle in the wordy war
Where knavery takes, in vice, her sly degrees,
As slip away, not guilty, from the bar,
Counsel or client, as their Honors please,
To breathe, in crowded courts, a poisonous breath
To plead for life—to justify a death—
To wrangle, jar, to twist, to twirl, to toil
This is the lawyer's life—a heart-consuming moil."

A collection of Mr. Thomas's poems has never been made. In 1844, Harper and Brothers, New York, published a volume entitled "The Beechen Tree, a Tale in Rhyme." With the " Emigrant," several well known songs, and a few satirical poems and epigrams, it would constitute an acceptable book, which we hope Mr. Thomas will compile. Rufus Wilmot Griswold, in the "Poets of America," said of Mr. Thomas: "He has a nice discrimination of the peculiarities of character, which give light and shade to the surface of society, and a hearty relish for that peculiar humor which abounds in that portion of our country which undoubtedly embraces most that is original and striking in manners and unrestrained in conduct. He must rank with the first illustrators of manners in the Valley of the Mississippi." E. S. Thomas, the father of Frederick William, died in Cincinnati in 1847. He was the author of "Reminiscenses of the Last Sixty-Five Years;" a work in two volumes, published in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1840, which contains historical and biographical sketches of permanent interest to the people of the West. Lewis F., a brother of Frederick W., is a poet, of whom notice is hereafter taken in this work. Martha M., a sister, has written acceptably for many magazines, and is the author of "Life's Lesson," a novel published by Harper and Brothers in 1855. The home of the family is now Cincinnati. One of the brothers, Calvin W., is a well known banker.