from most of the young people of these times, but
has as much wit and is as good company as anybody that ever I saw. What
would you give that I had but the wit to know when to make an end of my
letters? Never anybody was persecuted with such long epistles; but you
will pardon my unwillingness to leave you, and notwithstanding all your
little doubts, believe that I am very much

Your faithful friend

and humble servant,

D. OSBORNE.

_Letter 7._--There seem to have been two carriers bringing letters to
Dorothy at this time, Harrold and Collins; we hear something of each of
them in the following letters. Those who have seen the present-day
carriers in some unawakened market-place in the Midlands,--heavy,
rumbling, two-horse cars of huge capacity, whose three miles an hour is
fast becoming too sluggish for their enfranchised clients; those who
have jolted over the frozen ruts of a fen road, behind their comfortable
Flemish horses, and heard the gossip of the farmers and their wives, the
grunts of the discontented baggage pig, and the encouraging shouts of
the carrier; those, in a word, who have travelled in a Lincolnshire
carrier's cart, have, I fancy, a more correct idea of Dorothy's postmen
and their conveyances than any I could quote from authority or draw from
imagination.

Lord Lisle was the son of Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester, and brother
of the famous Algernon. He sat in the Long Parliament for Yarmouth, in
the Isle of Wight, and afterwards became a member of the Upper House.
Concerning his embassage to Sweden this is again proposed to him in
September 1653, but, as we read in the minutes of the Council, "when he
was desired to proceed, finding himself out of health, he desired to be
excused, whereupon Council still wishing to send the embassy--the Queen
of Sweden being favourably inclined to the Commonwealth--pitched upon
Lord Whitelocke, who was willing to go."

To Lady Sunderland and Mr. Smith there are several amusing references
in these letters. Lady Sunderland was the daughter of the Earl of
Leicester, and sister of Algernon Sydney. She was born in 1620, and at
the age of nineteen married Henry Lord Spencer, who was killed in the
battle of Newbury in 1642. After her husband's death, she retired to
Brington in Northamptonshire, until, wearied with the heavy load of
housekeeping, she came to live with her father and mother at Penshurst.
In the Earl of Leicester's journal, under date Thursday, July