ome. He had not read Monsieur
Galland's ingenious Arabian tales as yet; but be sure that there are
other folks who build castles in the air, and have fine hopes, and kick
them down too, besides honest Alnaschar.

CHAPTER X.

I GO TO CAMBRIDGE, AND DO BUT LITTLE GOOD THERE.

Mr lord, who said he should like to revisit the old haunts of his youth,
kindly accompanied Harry Esmond in his first journey to Cambridge. Their
road lay through London, where my Lord Viscount would also have Harry
stay a few days to show him the pleasures of the town before he entered
upon his university studies, and whilst here Harry's patron conducted
the young man to my Lady Dowager's house at Chelsey near London:
the kind lady at Castlewood having specially ordered that the young
gentleman and the old should pay a respectful visit in that quarter.

Her ladyship the Viscountess Dowager occupied a handsome new house in
Chelsey, with a garden behind it, and facing the river, always a bright
and animated sight with its swarms of sailors, barges, and wherries.
Harry laughed at recognizing in the parlor the well-remembered old
piece of Sir Peter Lely, wherein his father's widow was represented as
a virgin huntress, armed with a gilt bow-and-arrow, and encumbered only
with that small quantity of drapery which it would seem the virgins in
King Charles's day were accustomed to wear.

My Lady Dowager had left off this peculiar habit of huntress when she
married. But though she was now considerably past sixty years of age, I
believe she thought that airy nymph of the picture could still be easily
recognized in the venerable personage who gave an audience to Harry and
his patron.

She received the young man with even more favor than she showed to the
elder, for she chose to carry on the conversation in French, in which my
Lord Castlewood was no great proficient, and expressed her satisfaction
at finding that Mr. Esmond could speak fluently in that language. "'Twas
the only one fit for polite conversation," she condescended to say, "and
suitable to persons of high breeding."

My lord laughed afterwards, as the gentlemen went away, at his
kinswoman's behavior. He said he remembered the time when she could
speak English fast enough, and joked in his jolly way at the loss he had
had of such a lovely wife as that.

My Lady Viscountess deigned to ask his lordship news of his wife and
children; she had heard that Lady Castlewood had had the small