His voice was powerful (almost too loud sometimes) and most persuasive;
he was eloquent and impassioned, but he used little gesture or any
artifice to engage attention. He commenced with a rhapsody--startling in
the sudden flow of its eloquence, thrilling in its higher tones, tender
and compassionate (almost to tears) in its lower passages--a rhapsody to
the Virgin--

'O sweet head of my mother; sacred eyes!'

* * * * *

and then an appeal--an appeal for us 'true Catholics' to the 'Queen of
Heaven, the beautiful, the adorable.' He elevated our hearts with his
moving voice, and, by what we might call the electricity of sympathy,
almost to a frenzy of adoration; he taught us how the true believer,
'clad in hope,' would one day (if he leaned upon Mary his mother in all
the weary stages of the 'Passage of the Cross') be crowned with
fruition. He lingered with almost idolatrous emphasis on the charms of
Mary, and with his eyes fixed upon her image, his hands outstretched,
and a thousand upturned faces listening to his words, the aisles echoed
his romantic theme:--

'With my lips I kneel, and with my heart,
I fall about thy feet and worship thee.'

A stream of eloquence followed--studied or spontaneous it mattered
not--the congregation held their breath and listened to a story for the
thousandth time repeated.