"On many occasions, while at Oscott College, the Superior, and myself among the rest, often thought his zeal too unbounded and rather imprudent, and could not sanction some of his projects and undertakings. Though it cost him much, he always obeyed, and used to pray that Heaven would direct his superiors, whose direction he never refused to obey. I believe he never wished for anything but the will of God, and waited patiently for its accomplishment. I remember also on one occasion hearing him say, 'How _beautiful_ it would be _to die in a ditch, unseen and unknown_.' [Footnote 9] These were his very words; and I was forcibly struck when I {276} heard of the exact circumstances of his holy death, to see how his wish and prayer were granted to him." [Footnote 9: This was his continual aspiration. He wished to die like his Lord, deprived of human aid and sympathy.] He receives news in the beginning of the year 1841 of six nuns having bound themselves by vow to pray for the conversion of England. But a more beautiful and consolatory piece of information still was, that a French missioner had formed an association in Persia of prayers for the same object. He goes to London and preaches in several churches, among others, in Lincoln's-Inn Fields, of course about the conversion of England, for he scarcely ever preached a sermon in which he did not introduce this topic; nay, he never held a half-hour's conversation without introducing it. It was about this time, too, that he came across Mr. Pugin the elder. His first meeting was rather characteristic of both. Father Spencer had preached a sermon somewhere on the conversion of England, and he gave benediction after it. Pugin came into the sacristy. The famous Goth saw Father Spencer in a Roman cope, and he comes up to him in a kind of nettlesome mood, saying, "What! convert England with such a cope as that?" Father Spencer says in a letter written at this time, "I am not possessed with the enthusiastic zeal for correct forms (Gothic) which some are. It is not my special calling .... Mr. Pugin is the authority to which I would defer in these matters." The only other opinion of Pugin's he records in his letters, is that he said to Father Spencer one time, "It is absurd to expect to get anything for one's works from booksellers or publishers."