getting hold of a single defined object which reminded you of the rapid spring or unerring swoop of some strong-limbed or swift-winged creature on its quarry.  Whatever you might think that he did with it, or even if it seemed to escape from him, you could have no doubt what he sought to do; there was no wavering, confused, uncertain bungling in that powerful and steady hand.  Another feature was the character of the writer’s English.  We have learned to look upon Dr. Newman as one of the half-dozen or so of the innumerable good writers of the time who have fairly left their mark as masters on the language.  Little, assuredly, as the writer originally thought of such a result, the sermons have proved a permanent gift to our literature, of the purest English, full of spring, clearness, and force.  A hasty reader would perhaps at first only notice a very light, strong, easy touch, and might think, too, that it was a negligent one.  But it was not negligence; real negligence means at bottom bad work, and bad work will not stand the trial of time.  There are two great styles—­the self-conscious, like that of Gibbon or Macaulay, where great success in expression is accompanied by an unceasing and manifest vigilance that expression shall succeed, and where you see at each step that there is or has been much care and work in the mind, if not on the paper; and the unconscious, like that of Pascal or Swift or Hume, where nothing suggests at the moment that the writer is thinking of anything but his subject, and where the power of being able to say just what he wants to say seems to come at the writer’s command, without effort, and without his troubling himself more about it than about the way in which he holds his pen.  But both are equally the fruit of hard labour and honest persevering self-correction; and it is soon found out whether the apparent negligence comes of loose and slovenly habits of mind, or whether it marks the confidence of one who has mastered his instrument, and can forget himself and let himself go in using it.  The free unconstrained movement of Dr. Newman’s style tells any one who knows what writing is of a very keen and exact knowledge of the subtle and refined secrets of language.  With all that uncared-for play and simplicity, there was a fulness, a richness, a curious delicate music, quite instinctive and unsought for; above all, a precision and sureness of expression which people soon began to find were not within the power of most of those who tried to use language.  Such English, graceful with the grace of nerve, flexibility, and power, must always have attracted attention; but it had also an ethical element which was almost inseparable from its literary characteristics.  Two things powerfully determined the style of these sermons.  One was the intense hold which the vast realities of religion had gained on the writer’s mind, and the perfect truth with which his personality sank and faded away before their overwhelming presence; the other was