Wild Dayrell Author:John Kemp Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. The exile has ever been a favourite subject for historians and rhymers. When bidding a long farewell to the land of his birth, touching and pathe... more »tic words have been put into his mouth. The pious JSneas—hardened sinner, though he afterwards proved himself to be in re Dido—wept, we are told, on quitting burning Troy. Caius Marius, balancing himself on a hillock, looked back on Rome, and told its unconscious citizens that they would "want" him some day. Even Bill Styles, the convicted pilferer of watches and handkerchiefs, the ballad tells us, leaned over the taffrail, and made a gushing appeal to the sea-gull to lend him her wings, and waft him back to the arms of his "Polly love." But the gentleman in Queer-street—the gentleman with six children and a scolding wife, in search of a foreign clime and mutton at 4d. a pound has somehow been forgotten. Surely, their feelings at leaving the white cliffs of old England might be made a theme by some sentimental pen. Take thehint, authoress of the "Bleeding Heart" and the "Washerwoman's Lament;" yes, see what you can do. Dayrell was quite as sad and lugubrious as any of those we have named when .on board the good ship " Seahorse," bound from Newhaven to Dieppe. It was one of those days in early summer when the winds, for once, are hushed, and a landsman would pooh-pooh the idea of making harbours of refuge. A shadowy haze enveloped Mr. Ains- worth's much-loved Sussex downs, and the clumps of trees that nestled in the valleys, each in turn becoming small by degrees and beautifully less, as the engines, performing I-dont-know-how-many revolutions a minute, propelled the steamer on her course. Pleasant day for you passengers, who fear the sea, and the malady that will, in spite of libations of pale brandy and water, af...« less