After the completion of his legal studies he traveled extensively in Europe in 1847–1848, and on his return became joint editor with his brother Evert of The Literary World, afterward becoming joint author with his brother of the Cyclopaedia of American Literature.

He then revisited Europe, and, on his return in 1857, entered on a separate career of authorship in a congenial department.

[1][2] He was by early training and long-established choice warmly attached to the liturgy and order of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and especially interested in its biographical literature.

To this he devoted himself, and, having been elected treasurer of the Sunday School union and Church book society, he began a series of biographies of English clergymen, with a view to attract the interest of American readers.

The first of these was the "Life of George Herbert" (New York, 1858), followed by the lives of Bishop Thomas Ken (1859), Jeremy Taylor (1860), and Hugh Latimer (1861).