Last Monday we met the Mills' at Grange, she, delightful as usual. We
returned the next day, and in our road called on Mr Beaumont of
Whitley.

The master of Whitley is a strange creature, half mad. He leads the
life of a hermit, and has not had a brush, painter or carpenter in his
house since he came into possession many, many years ago.

It is more like a haunted house in a romance than anything I ever saw.
He is now an old man, and has never bought a morsel of furniture; half
the house never was finished; one of the staircases has got no
banisters. The stables were burnt down some time ago and have never
yet been rebuilt. The rooms he lives in have not been put to rights
for many years--a description of the things they contain would not be
easy,--hats, wigs, coats, piles of newspapers, magazines and letters,
draughts, bottles, wash-hand basins, pictures without frames, apples,
tallow candles and broken tea-cups.

The whole house looks like a place for lumber. There are some fine
rooms, but so damp and mouldy it is quite shocking. There is a chapel
completely filled with old rubbish and a plaid bed which was put up
for the Pretender.

In the room Mr Beaumont sleeps in I saw his coffin made of cedar wood.
He scarcely ever sees a living creature and quite dislikes the sight
of a woman. He does everything in the room, which no housemaid ever
enters, nor indeed any part of the house.

We saw there Jack Mills, the Democrat, and his little boy who is
christened Alfred Ankerstrom Mirabeau. Ankestrome was the man who