Strange it is that the maiden meditations of more than two centuries ago should have recently been brought to light in the love-letters of Dorothy Osborne, so full of womanly tenderness, so humorous, so grave and gay by turns, and so valuable for the spirited pictures they give of the life and personages of the day. Among stacks of dry-as-dust manuscripts, awaiting the discriminating inspection of the antiquarian, are doubtless other letters of sentiment worthy of the world’s reading, even if there are few equal in grace and style to those of the lovely mistress of Chicksands. A few such unknown or forgotten love-letters have come under the observation of the writer,--among these some yellowed pages traced by the hand of William Penn and addressed to Hannah Callowhill, whose name is now handed down to Philadelphians by the street which bears her family name, but who was known to her contemporaries as a woman of strong character and noble qualities, well fitted to be a helpmeet to the good Proprietary. These letters form pleasant reading for a leisure hour, not only on account of their quaint simplicity, but also because of the insight they give into the delicate and refined nature of the man who wrote them.[30] We are wont to think of the founder of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as a man deeply immersed in religious questions, in legal business, land surveys and titles,--indeed, in all that affected the welfare of the little colony that he established on the banks of the Delaware. To picture him as an ardent lover requires some imagination, especially at a period when the early romance of his life was buried in the grave of his beloved Gulielma, and he figures on the pages of history as a widower, past middle age, with three children. Yet among his letters to his betrothed are some that glow with all the warmth and ardor of youthful affection, while, as befits a man of his years and position, they contain wise reflections on life, and passages marked by the prudence, the forethought, and the practical grasp that come with riper age; and always they are deeply and sincerely religious. This Quaker lover does not write a sonnet to the eyebrows of his mistress, nor does he say, like a modern widower whose _billet doux_ has come under our notice, that he has “lost his married partner and would be glad to renew his loss.” He tells her, in grave and simple language, that it is for the qualities of her heart and mind that he loves her and desires to win her, as in the following written from Worminghurst, Penn’s English home, in 1695: