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Rh very early age the boy was sent to school at Douay, where a seminary had been established to supply the needs of English Catholics. Here, in the person of Leonard Lessius, he first came into intimate contact with the Society of Jesus, destined to be so potent a factor in his life. Later, at Paris, his studies were continued under the guidance of Thomas Darbyshire, a zealous soul and one of the first Englishmen to enter that Order. The Catholic mind will scarcely need any comment on the ardour and self-consecration of these early Jesuits, but it is edifying to read the following tribute from such a critic as Dr. Alexander B. Grosart, in his "Memorial Introduction" to Southwell's Poems: "The name of Ignatius Loyola was still a recent 'memory' and power, and his magnificent and truly apostolic example of burning love, compassion, faith, zeal, self-denial, charged the very atmosphere with sympathy as with electricity. . . . The Society was then in its first fresh 'love' and force, unentangled with political action (real or alleged); and I pity the Protestant who does not recognise in Loyola and his disciples noble men . . . with the single object to win allegiance to Jesus Christ." There is nothing to surprise in the fact that the colossal Jesuit hope of winning back Europe to Catholic Christianity should have appealed to the earnest young English student, or that their lives should have excited his passionate admiration; but it is worth noting that while still in his early teens Robert Southwell should have formed a life-purpose, from which he never wavered. To "leave all," to take up the Cross, and bear it back to the old forsaken shrines, became the one dream of this elect young soul. He applied for admission into the Society of Jesus; and, being refused because of his youth, wrote an impassioned Lament expressing his