remembrance of that mission, which was so rich in the highest kind of pleasure, as well as spiritual profit and blessing. At that time, all was peace. Sumter was solitary and silent, untenanted by a single soldier. Fort Moultrie and Sullivan's Island, and the beautiful battery and the bay were calm and peaceful, where, a few years later, all was black and angry with the terrible thunder-storm of war. Blackened ruins are all that remain of that beautiful cathedral and the pleasant home of the clergy. Some of those clergymen have died in attending the sick soldiers of the United States, and others are scattered in different places. Many of those fine young men and bright boys have left their bodies on the battle-field, or lost the bloom and vigor of their youth in the unwholesome camp or hospital or military prison. The good Sisters have been driven from one shelter to another, by the terrible necessities of a desperate warfare, whose miseries they have courageously striven to alleviate by their heroic charity. Charleston has been desolated, and the Church of Charleston has shared in the common ruin. Nevertheless, there is every reason to hope that this temporary period of desolation will be succeeded in due time by one more auspicious for the solid and extensive progress of the Catholic religion than any which has yet been seen, in that vast region where the eloquent voice of Bishop England proclaimed the blessed faith of the true and apostolic Church of Christ. After the conclusion of the Charleston mission, F. Baker returned to Annapolis, and remained there in charge of the little parish attached to the convent, until the following September. One of his companions, the invalid of St. Augustine, went to Cuba to re-establish his health; and the other three, after giving several other missions in New York State, returned also to summer quarters. {170} The missionary labors in which F. Baker had been thus far engaged, were, comparatively speaking, but a light and pleasant prelude to the continuous and arduous missionary career of a little more than seven years, which he commenced in the autumn of 1857. At the very outset he was obliged to make a decision of a very grave and important matter, which resulted in a still more complete separation from the scenes and associates of his past life, and threw him more completely upon a pure and conscientious devotion to his priestly duties for the sake of God alone, as his only consolation in this world.