His style was formed on the Gospel. He loved the parables and the similes of Our Lord, and rightly judged that the style of his Divine Master was the most worthy of imitation. So far as the matter of his discourses were concerned, he was inimitable; his manner was peculiar to himself, deeply earnest and touching. He abstained from the rousing, thundering style, and his attempts that way to suit the taste and thus work upon the convictions of certain congregations, showed him that his fort did not lie there. The consequence was, that when the words of what he jocosely termed a "crack" preacher would die with the sound of his own voice, or the exclamations of the multitude, Father Ignatius's words lived with their lives, and helped them to bear trials that came thirty years after they had heard him. Towards the end of his life, he became rather tiresome to those who knew not his spirit; but it was the tiresomeness of St. John the Evangelist. We are told that "the disciple whom Jesus loved" used to be carried in his old age before the people, and that his only sermon was "My little children, love one another." He preached no more, and no less, but kept perpetually repeating these few words. Father Ignatius, in like manner, was continually repeating "the conversion of England." No matter what the subject of his sermon was, he brought this in. He told us often that it became a second nature to him; that he could not quit thinking or speaking of it, even if he tried, and believed he could speak for ten days consecutively on the conversion of England, without having to repeat an idea. {363} He got on very well in the missions: he took all the different parts as they were assigned him; but he was more successful in the lectures than in the great sermons of the evening. His confessional was always besieged with penitents, and he never spared himself. The late Cardinal, who was the chief mover in bringing the Passionists to England, wished to have a house of the order in the diocese of Westminster (then the London District), to which he had been recently translated. Father Dominic entered heartily into the project, and Father Ignatius with him. After a few weeks' negotiation, they took possession of Poplar House, in the west end of Hampstead, towards the end of June, 1848. A new foundation was, in those days, as it is still, a formidable undertaking. The ground has generally to be bought; a church and house built upon it; the necessary machinery to set it going to be provided, and all this from nothing but the Providence of God, and the charity of benefactors. Under a more than ordinary pressure of their difficulties, the house was opened, and after many changes and removals, it has finally fixed itself on the brow of Highgate Hill, under the name of St. Joseph's Retreat.