Father Baker never, during the whole course of his missionary life, enjoyed any thing so much as this Southern tour, and especially his stay at Charleston, the most delightful city of the South. After the long seclusion of three years in a convent, which had impaired his health and vigor, the recreation and pleasure of such a trip wad most beneficial and delightful to him. The work in which he was engaged, besides the higher satisfaction which it gave to his zeal and charity, had also the charm and excitement of novelty, without the pressure of too arduous and excessive labor. At Charleston, he was already prepared by his previous experience and practice to take a full share in the principal sermons, and to give them that peculiar tone and effect which is characteristic of mission sermons, and makes them _sui generis_ among all others. {168} All the circumstances were calculated to call the noblest powers of his mind and the warmest emotions of his heart into full play. The cathedral was large, beautiful, and of a fine ecclesiastical style in all its arrangements. The adjoining presbytery, which had been built for a convent, and all the surroundings, were both appropriate for the residence of a body of cathedral clergy and pleasing to the eye of taste. The clergymen themselves, with their distinguished head, afterward the bishop of the diocese, were men of accomplished learning and genial character, whose kindness and hospitality knew no bounds, and whose zeal made them efficient fellow-laborers in the work of the mission. The congregation itself had many features of unusual interest. Having been long established, and carefully watched over, since the illustrious Bishop England organized the diocese, containing a large permanent population of various national descent and of all classes of society, not a few of whom were converts from South Carolina families, an unusually large number of intelligent young men, trained up to a great extent under the care of the clergy, and thus giving scope and affording a field for a man like F. Baker to display his special gifts to the greatest advantage and profit--it is not surprising that he should have called out, both in his public discharge of duty and in private and social intercourse, that same warm admiration which had followed him in the former period of his life. In his sermons, he went far above his former level, and began to develop that combination of the best and most perfect elements of sacred eloquence, which, in the estimation of the most impartial and competent judges, placed him in the first rank of preachers. The present bishop of Charleston, whose pre-eminent learning and high qualities of mind are well known, pronounced one of F. Baker's discourses a perfect sermon, and the best he had ever heard. {169} The Catholics of Charleston never saw Father Baker again; but they never forgot him, and he never forgot them; for, during the rest of his too short life, he recurred frequently to the