As his thinking was exact, so his style was clear-cut and trenchant. Even when he was writing most swiftly, it never sank below a high level of form and finish. Every word had its use and every sentence told. There was no doubt about his meaning, and just as little about the strength of his convictions. He had a gift for terse vivacious paragraphs commenting on some event of the day or summing up the effect of a speech or a debate. The touch was equally light and firm. But if the manner was brisk, the matter was solid: you admired the keenness of the insight and the weight of the judgment just as much as the brightness of the style. Much of the brightness lay in the humour. That is a plant which blossoms so much more profusely on Transatlantic soil that English readers of the _Nation_ had usually a start of surprise when told that this most humorous of American journalists was not an American at all but a European, and indeed a European who never became thoroughly Americanised. It was humour of a pungent and sarcastic quality, usually directed to the detection of tricks or the exposure of shams, but it was eminently mirth-provoking and never malicious. Frequently it was ironical, and the irony sometimes so fine as to be mistaken for seriousness. The _Nation_ was from its very first numbers so full of force, keenness, and knowledge, and so unusually well written, that it made its way rapidly among the educated classes of the Eastern States. It soon became a power, but a power of a new kind. Mr. Godkin wanted most of the talents or interests of the ordinary journalist. He gave no thought to the organisation of the paper as a business undertaking. He scarcely heeded circulation, either when his livelihood depended upon the _Nation_ of which he was the chief owner, or when he was associated with others in the ownership of the _Evening Post_. He refused to allow any news he disapproved, including all scandal and all society gossip, to appear. He was prepared at any moment to incur unpopularity from his subscribers, or even to offend one half of his advertisers. He took no pains to get news before other journals, and cared nothing for those "beats" and "scoops" in which the soul of the normal newspaper man finds a legitimate source of pride. He was not there, he would have said, to please either advertisers or subscribers, but to tell the American people the truths they needed to hear, and if those truths were distasteful, so much the more needful was it to proclaim them. He was absolutely independent not only of all personal but of all party ties. A public man was never either praised or suffered to escape censure because he was a private acquaintance. He once told me that the being obliged to censure those with whom he stood in personal relations was the least agreeable feature of his profession. Whether an act was done by the Republicans or by the Democrats made no difference to his judgment, or to the severity with which his