56 A NORTH-COUNTRY HALL 



carpenters cout out the stackes out of the hart of a 

 good eish tree.' 'Damedg' having been made good, 

 the Frenchman went to work with a will. His name 

 proved a heavy stumbling-block to the honest steward's 

 orthography, being rendered variously 'bemun,' 'bamant/ 

 ' beamant,' and ' Mr. Beomant,' generally without a 

 capital initial, as if in stout Westmoreland contempt 

 for the foreigner. 'The ould brockenwinded coach 

 hors dyed this day comeing from Milthropp with a 

 sack of otes on his back. We shall not know what 

 to do in the garden for him, and the other all most 

 killed weth contenually working . . . but beamont 

 hath put all the borders in as good order as he cane, 

 he is now moving and altering his flowers and plants, 

 and allso hath poulled down the heg was round the 

 mellion ground, and hath planted the helli bore 

 round the place, and he got very good stacks coot 

 and set round it.' 



Such letters, full of placid details of a country 

 gentleman's recreation, are in strange contrast to many 

 others which must have been delivered by the same 

 posts ; for Graham, a staunch and restless Jacobite, was 

 proclaimed repeatedly, and once was imprisoned on a 

 charge of high treason. His ambitious schemes, his 

 darkling plots, his hopes, scares, success, disappoint- 

 ment, all may be traced in his correspondence. How 

 little fruit they bore ! But the lowlier achievements of 

 M. Beaumont endure in perfection at this day. 



It is fairy ground, this quiet pleasaunce of Levens, 

 a shred of a bygone age, surviving restless modes and 



