After his earlier education he was articled, on 24 April 1832, to his uncle, Mr. Charles Sabine of Oswestry, for the term of five years, and passed the Incorporated Law Society's examination in November 1838, but there is no record of his ever having become a solicitor.

In 1853 he was sent by that journal as special commissioner to inquire into the questions connected with the subject of labour and the poor in Russia, Syria, and Egypt.

His first magazine papers, among which were A Lounge in the Œil de Bœuf, An Excursion of some English Actors to China, Cousin Emily, and The Shrift on the Rail, brought him into communication with Harrison Ainsworth, Laman Blanchard, and other well-known men, and he soon became the centre of a strong muster of literary friends, who found pleasure in his wit and social qualities.

The exhibition of 1851 gave occasion for his writing The Exposition: a Scandinavian Sketch, containing as much irrelevant matter as possible in one act, which was produced at the Strand on 28 April in that year.

To a volume edited by Albert Smith in 1849, called Gavarni in London, he furnished three sketches — The Opera, The Coulisse, and The Foreign Gentleman; and in companionship with Angus B.

At thirty-eight years of age he began to assert his claim to consideration as a popular novelist by writing Aspen Court: a Story of our own Time.

He did so as the author of a twelve-installment serial fiction, the Gordian Knot, from January 1858; but this work, illustrated by John Tenniel, remained unfinished for upwards of two years.

One of his best known series of articles was The Essence of Parliament, a style of writing for which he was peculiarly fitted by his previous training in connection with the Morning Chronicle.