The family removed to a larger and more central residence, for his sake, near St. Paul's Church, where Francis was Assistant Minister. All things seemed to smile and promise fair, but this beautiful bud had a worm in it. A slow and lingering but fatal attack of phthisis seized him, just as he was beginning to succeed in his professional career. His brother accompanied him to Bermuda, but the voyage was rather an additional suffering than a benefit, and on the 9th of April, 1852, he died. It was Good Friday. He had prayed frequently that he might die on that day, and before his departure, he called his brother to him, made a general confession, desired him to pronounce over him the form of absolution prescribed in the English Prayer-Book, and received the communion of the Episcopal Church. These acts were sacramentally valueless, but I trust, without presuming to decide positively on a secret matter which God alone can judge, that his intention was right before God, and his error a mistake of judgment without perversity of will. His brother afterward felt deeply solicitous lest he might have been himself blamable for keeping him in the Episcopal communion, and grieved that he had died out of the visible communion of the Catholic Church. Still, as he was conscious of his own integrity of purpose, he tranquillized his mind with the hope that his brother had died in spiritual communion with the true Church and in the charity of God, and endeavored to aid him, as far as he was still within the reach of human assistance, by having many masses offered for the repose of his soul. Miss Dickens died a little before Alfred, and Elizabeth Baker died some time after her brother became a Catholic, but before his ordination. {23}