His eye was on our commerce, on our courts of Law, on our streets and alleys, our army and navy, our colonies, the vaster than the island England, and still he would be busy picking up needles and threads in the island.

Deeds of valour were noted by him, lapses of cowardice: how one man stood against a host for law or humanity, how crowds looked on at the beating of a woman, how a good fight was maintained in some sly ring between two of equal brawn: and manufacturers were warned of the consequences of their iniquities, Government was lashed for sleeping upon shaky ordinances, colonists were gibbeted for the maltreating of natives: the ring and fervour of the notes on daily events told of Rockney's hand upon the national heart--with a faint, an enforced, reluctant indication of our not being the men we were.
But after all, the main secret was his art of writing round English, instead of laborious Latinised periods: and the secret of the art was his meaning what he said.

It was the personal throb.

The fire of a mind was translucent in Press columns where our public had been accustomed to the rhetoric of primed scribes.

He did away with the Biscay billow of the leading article--Bull's favourite prose--bardic construction of sentences that roll to the antithetical climax, whose foamy top is offered and gulped as equivalent to an idea.