smoke of battle faded from its walls, and sunlight entered in. When William was old enough he was sent to the famous Jesuit College at St. Omer's, France, where the Fathers were so deeply impressed by his virtue and ability that after a time he was, says Anthony à Wood, "earnestly invited to take upon him the habit" of the Society. Eminently fitting would it have seemed for a Habington to enter that Company of Jesus, whose aims and dangers the family had shared in England, but human destinies will "e'en gang their ain gate." William, apparently uncertain of his vocation, "by excuses got free and left them," passing on to continue his studies in Paris. And, as the final decision was against the apostolate, he returned to England, where "being then at man's estate," Wood tells us "he was instructed at home in matters of history by his father, and became an accomplished gentleman."
It could not have been so very long after this that Habington met Lucy Herbert, youngest daughter of the Baron Powis, and his vita nuova dawned. "I found," he subsequently wrote, "that Oratory was dombe when it began to speak her, and wonder . . . a lethargie." His ingenuous little character sketch of "A Mistris"(prefixed to Castara) gives a more detailed description of this "fairest treasure the avarice of love can covet" "She is chaste. . . . She is as fair as Nature intended her, helpt perhaps to a more pleasing grace by the sweetness of education, not by the slight of Art. . . . She is young. . . . She is innocent even from the knowledge of sinne. . . . She is not proud. . . . In her carriage she is sober, and thinkes her youth expresseth life enough, without the giddy motion fashion of late hath taken up. She dances to the best applause, but doates not on the vanity of it. . . . She sings, but not
