Chapter XI: Part XIII (4)

Often, too, have we been told by persons somewhat presumptuously assuming the office of our instructors, to beware how we suffer our admiration of genius to seduce us from our reverence of virtue. Never cease to remember--has been still their cry--how far superior is moral to intellectual worth. Nay, they have told us that they are not akin in nature. But akin they are; and grief and pity 'tis that ever they should be disunited. But mark in what a hateful, because hypocritical spirit, such advices as these have not seldom been proffered, till salutary truths were perverted by misapplication into pernicious falsehoods. For these malignant counsellors sought not to elevate virtue, but to degrade genius; and never in any other instance have they stood forth more glaringly self-convicted of the most wretched ignorance of the nature both of the one and the other, than in their wilful blindness to so many of the noblest attributes of humanity in the character of Burns. Both gifts are alike from heaven, and both alike tend heavenward. Therefore we lament to see genius soiled by earthly stain; therefore we lament to see virtue, where no genius is, fall before the tempter. But we, in our own clear natural perceptions, refuse the counsels of those who with the very breath of their warning would blight the wreath bound round the heads of the Muses' sons by a people's gratitude--who, in affected zeal for religion and morality, have so deeply violated the spirit of both, by vile misrepresentations, gross exaggerations, and merciless denunciations of the frailties of our common nature in illustrious men--men who, in spite of their aberrations, more or less deplorable, from the right path, were not only in their prevailing moods devout worshippers of virtue, but in the main tenor or their lives exemplary to their brethren. And such a man was Burns. In boyhood--youth--manhood--where such peasant as he? And if in trouble and in trial, from which his country may well turn in self-reproach, he stood not always fast, yet shame and sin it were, and indelible infamy, were she not _now_ to judge his life as Christianity commands. Preyed upon, alas! by those anxieties that pierce deepest into the noblest hearts--anxieties for the sakes--even on account of the very means of subsistence--of his own household and his own hearth--yet was he in his declining, shall we call them disastrous years, on the whole faithful to the divine spirit with which it had pleased Heaven to endow him--on the whole obedient to its best inspirations; while he rejoiced to illumine the paths of poverty with light which indeed was light on heaven, and from an inexhaustible fancy, teeming to the genial warmth of the heart in midst of chill and gloom, continued to the very last to strew along the weary ways of this world flowers so beautiful in their freshness, that to eyes too familiar with tears they looked as if dropped from heaven.

These are sentiments with which I rejoice to hear the sympathy of this great assemblage thus unequivocally expressed--for my words but awaken thoughts lodged deep in all considerate hearts. For which of us is there in whom, known or unknown, alas! there is not much that needs to be forgiven? Which of us that is not more akin to Burns in his fleshly frailties then in his diviner spirit? That conviction regards not merely solemn and public celebrations of reverential memory--such as this; it pervades the tenor of our daily life, runs in our heart's-blood, sits at our hearths, wings our loftiest dreams of human exaltation. How, on this earth, could we love, or revere, or emulate, if, in our contemplation of the human being, we could not sunder the noble, the fair, the gracious, the august, from the dregs of mortality, from the dust that hangs perishably about him the imperishable? We judge in love, that in love we may be judged. At our hearthsides, we gain more than we dared desire, by mutual mercy; at our hearthsides, we bestow and receive a better love, by this power of soft and magnanimous oblivion. We are ourselves the gainers, when thus we honour the great dead. _They_ hear not--_they_ feel not, excepting by an illusion of our own moved imaginations, which fill up chasms of awful, impassable separation; but _we_ hear--_we_ feel; and the echo of the acclaim which hills and skies have this day repeated, we can carry home in our hearts, where it shall settle down into the composure of love and pity, and admiration and gratitude, felt to be due for ever to our great poet's shade.

In no other spirit could genius have ever dared, in elegies and hymns, to seek to perpetuate at once a whole people's triumph, and a whole people's grief, by celebration of king, sage, priest, or poet, gone to his reward. From the natural infirmities of his meanest subject, what King was ever free? Against the golden rim that rounds his mortal temples come the same throbbings from blood in disease or passion hurrying from heart to brain, as disturb the aching head of the poor hind on his pallet of straw. But the king had been a guardian, a restorer, a deliverer; therefore his sins are buried or burned with his body; and all over the land he saved, generation after generation continues to cry aloud--"O king, live for ever!" The Sage who, by long meditation on man's nature and man's life, has seen how liberty rests on law, rights on obligations, and that his passions must be fettered, that his will be free--how often has he been overcome, when wrestling in agony with the powers of evil, in that seclusion from all trouble in which reverent admiration nevertheless believes that wisdom for ever serenely dwells! The Servant of God, has he always kept his heart pure from the world, nor ever held up in prayer other than spotless hands? A humble confession of his own utter unworthiness would be his reply alike to scoffer and to him who believes. But, unterrified by plague and pestilence, he had carried comfort into houses deserted but by sin and despair; or he had sailed away, as he truly believed for ever, to savage lands, away from the quiet homes of Christian men--among whom he might have hoped to lead a life of peace, it may be of affluence and honour--for his Divine Master's sake, and for sake of them sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death. Therefore his name dies not, and all Christendom calls it blest. From such benefactors as these there may seem to be, but there is not, a deep descent to them who have done their service by what one of the greatest of them all has called "the vision and the faculty divine"--them to whom have been largely given the powers of fancy and imagination and creative thought, that they might move men's hearts, and raise men's souls, by the reflection of their own passions and affections in poetry, which is still an inspired speech. Nor have men, in their judgment of the true Poets, dealt otherwise with them than with patriot kings, benign legislators, and holy priests. Them, too, when of the highest, all nations and ages have reverenced in their gratitude. Whatever is good and great in man's being seems shadowed in the name of Milton; and though he was a very man in the storms of civil strife that shook down the throne at the shedding of the blood of kings, nevertheless, we devoutly believe with Wordsworth, that

"His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart."

But not of such as he only, who "in darkness, and with danger compassed round," soared "beyond this visible diurnal sphere," and whose song was of mercy and judgment, have men wisely resolved to dwell only on what is pure and high and cognate with their thoughts of heaven. Still, as we keep descending from height to height in the regions of song, we desire to regard with love the genius that beautifies wherever it settles down; and, if pity will steal in for human misfortunes, or for human frailties reproach, our love suffers no abatement, and religious men feel that there is piety in pilgrimage to such honoured graves. So feel we now at this commemoration. For our Poet we now claim the privilege, at once bright and austere, of death. We feel that our Burns is brought within the justification of all celebrations of human names; and that, in thus honouring his memory, we virtuously exercise the imaginative rights of enthusiasm owned by every people that has produced its great men.

And with a more especial propriety do we claim this justice in our triumphal celebration of poets, who, like Burns, were led by the character of their minds to derive the matter and impulse of their song, in a stricter sense, from themselves. For they have laid bare to all eyes many of their own weaknesses, at the side of their higher and purer aspirations. Unreserved children of sincerity, by the very open-heartedness which is one great cause of their commanding power, and contagiously diffuses every zealous affection originating in their nobility of nature--by this grown to excess, made negligent of instinctive self-defence, and heedless of misconstruction, or overcome by importunate and clinging temptations--to what charges have they not been exposed from that proneness to disparaging judgments so common in little minds! For such judgments are easy indeed to the very lowest understandings, and regard things that are visible to eyes that may seldom have commerced with things that are above. But they who know Burns as we know him, know that by this sometimes unregulated and unguarded sympathy with all appertaining to his kind, and especially to his own order, he was enabled to receive into himself all modes of their simple, but not undiversified life, so that his poetry murmurs their loves and joys from a thousand fountains. And suppose--which was the case--that this unguarded sympathy, this quick sensibility, and this vivid capacity of happiness which the moment brings, and the frankness of impulse, and the strength of desire, and the warmth of blood, which have made him what he greatly is, which have been fire and music in his song, and manhood, and courage, and endurance, and independence in his life, have at times betrayed or overmastered him--to turn against him all this self-painting and self-revealing, is it not ungrateful, barbarous, inhuman? Can he be indeed a true lover of his kind, who would record in judgment against such a man words that have escaped him in the fervour of the pleading designed to uphold great causes dear to humanity?--who would ignobly strike the self-disarmed?--scornfully insult him who, kneeling at the Muses' confessional, whispers secrets that take wings and fly abroad to the uttermost parts of the earth? Can they be lovers of the people who do so? who find it in their hearts thus to think, and speak, and write of Robert Burns?--He who has reconciled poverty to its lot, toil to its taskwork, care to its burden--nay, I would say even--grief to its grave? And by one Immortal Song has sanctified for ever the poor man's Cot--by such a picture as only genius, in the inspiring power of piety, could have painted; has given enduring life to the image--how tender and how true!--of the Happy Night passing by sweet transition from this worky world into the Hallowed Day, by God's appointment breathing a heavenly calm over all Christian regions in their rest--nowhere else so profoundly--and may it never be broken!--as over the hills and valleys of our beloved, and yet religious land!

It cannot be said that the best biographers of Burns, and his best critics, have not done, or desired to do, justice to his character as well as to his genius; and, according as the truth has been more entirely and fearlessly spoken, has he appeared the nobler and nobler man. All our best poets, too, have exultingly sung the worth, while they mourned the fate of him, the brightest of the brotherhood. But above, and below, and round about all that they have been uttering, has all along been heard a voice, which they who know how to listen for it can hear, and which has pronounced a decision in his favour not to be reversed; for on earth it cannot be carried to a higher tribunal. A voice heard of old on great national emergencies, when it struck terror into the hearts of tyrants, who quaked, and quailed, and quitted for aye our land before "the unconquered Caledonian spear"--nor, since our union with noblest England, ever slack to join with her's and fervid Erin's sons, the thrice-repeated cry by which battle-fields are cleared; but happier, far happier to hear, in its low deep tone of peace. For then it is like the sound of distant waterfalls, the murmur of summer woods, or the sea rolling in its rest. I mean the Voice of the People of Scotland--the Voice of her Peasantry and her Trades--of all who earn their bread by the sweat of their brow--her Working Men.

I presume not to draw their character. But this much I will say, that in the long run they know whom it is fitting they should honour and love. They will not be dictated to in their choice of the names that with them shall be household words. Never, at any period of their history, have they been lightly moved; but, when moved, their meaning was not to be mistaken; tenacious their living grasp as the clutch of death; though force may wrench the weapon from their hands, no force can wrench the worship from their hearts. They may not be conversant with our written annals; but in our oral traditions they are familiar with historic truths--grand truths conceived according to the People's idea of their own national mind, as their hearts have kindled in imagination of heroic or holy men. Imaginary but real--for we all believe that men as good, as wise, as brave, have been amongst us as ever fancy fabled for a people's reverence. What manner of men have been their darlings? It would be hard to say; for their love is not exclusive--it is comprehensive. In the national memory live for ever characters how widely different!--with all the shades, fainter or darker, of human infirmity! For theirs is not the sickly taste that craves for perfection where no frailties are. They do not demand in one and the same personage inconsistent virtues. But they do demand sincerity, and integrity, and resolution, and independence, and an open front, and an eye that fears not to look in the face of clay! And have not the grave and thoughtful Scottish people always regarded with more especial affection those who have struggled with adversity--who have been tried by temptations from without or from within--now triumphant, now overcome--but, alike in victory or defeat, testifying by their conduct that they were animated by no other desire so steadily as by love of their country and its people's good? Not those who have been favourites of fortune, even though worthy of the smiles in which they basked; but those who rose superior to fortune, who could not frown them down. Nor have they withheld their homage from the unfortunate in this world of chance and change, if, in abasement of condition, by doing its duties they upheld the dignity of their own nature, and looked round them on their honest brethren in poverty with pride.

And how will such a people receive a great National Poet? How did they receive Burns? With instant exultation. At once, they knew of themselves, before critics and philosophers had time to tell them, that a great Genius of their own had risen, and they felt a sudden charm diffused over their daily life. By an inexplicable law, humour and pathos are dependent on the same constitution of mind; and in his Poems they found the very soul of mirth, the very soul of sadness, as they thought it good with him to be merry, or to remember with him, "that man was made to mourn." But besides what I have said of them, the people of Scotland hold in the world's repute--signally so--the name of a religious people. Many of them, the descendants of the old covenanters, heirs of the stern zeal which took up arms for the purity of the national faith--still tinged, it may be, by the breath of the flame that then passed over the land--retain a certain severity of religious judgment in questions of moral transgression, which is known to make a part of hereditary Scottish manners--especially in rural districts, where manners best retain their stamp. But the sound natural understanding of the Scottish peasant, I use the liberty to say, admits, to take their place at the side of one another, objects of his liberal and comprehensive regard, which might appear, to superficial observation and shallow judgment, to stand upon such different grounds, as that the approbation of the one should exclude the admiration of the other. But not so. Nature in him is various as it is vigorous. He does not, with an over-jealous scrutiny, vainly try to reduce into seeming consistency affections spontaneously springing from many sources. Truth lies at the bottom; and, conscious of truth, he does not mistrust or question his own promptings. An awful reverence, the acknowledgment of a Law without appeal or error--Supreme, Sacred, Irresistible--rules in his judgment of other men's actions, and of his own. Nevertheless, under shelter and sanction of that rule, he feels, loves, admires, like a man. Religion has raised and guards in him--it does not extinguish--the natural human heart. If the martyrs of his worship to him are holy--holy, too, are his country's heroes. And holy her poets--if such she have--who have sung--as during his too short life above them all sang Burns--for Scotland's sake. Dear is the band that ties the humbly educated man to the true national poet. To many in the upper classes he is, perhaps, but one among a thousand artificers of amusement who entertain and scatter the tedium of their idler hours. To the peasant the book lies upon his shelf a household treasure. There he finds depicted himself--his own works and his own ways. There he finds a cordial for his drooping spirits, nutriment for his wearied strength. Burns is his brother--his helper in time of need, when fretfulness and impatience are replaced with placidity by his strains, or of a sudden with a mounting joy. And far oftener than they who know not our peasantry would believe, before their souls awakened from torpor he is a luminous and benign presence in the dark hut; for, in its purity and power, his best poetry is felt to be inspired, and subordinate to the voice of heaven.

And will such a people endure to hear their own Poet wronged? No, no. Think not to instruct _them_ in the right spirit of judgment. They have read the Scriptures, perhaps, to better purpose than their revilers, and know better how to use the lessons learned there, applicable alike to us all--the lessons, searching and merciful, which proscribe mutual judgment amongst beings, all, in the eye of absolute Holiness and Truth, stained, erring, worthless: And none so well as aged religious men in such dwellings know, from their own experience, from what they have witnessed among their neighbours, and from what they have read of the lives of good and faithful servants, out of the heart of what moral storms and shipwrecks, that threatened to swallow the strong swimmer in the middle passage of life, has often been landed safe at last, the rescued worshipper upon the firm land of quiet duties, and of years exempt from the hurricane of the passions! Thus thoughtfully guided in their opinion of him, who died young--cut off long before the period when others, under the gracious permission of overruling mercy, have begun to redeem their errors, and fortified perhaps by a sacred office, to enter upon a new life--they will for ever solemnly cherish the memory of the Poet of the Poor. And in such sentiments there can be no doubt but that all his countrymen share; who will, therefore rightfully hold out between Burns and all enemies a shield which clattering shafts may not pierce. They are proud of him, as a lowly father is proud of an illustrious son. The rank and splendour attained reflects glory down, but resolves not, nor weakens one single tie.

Ay, for many a deep reason the Scottish people love their own Robert Burns. Never was the personal character of poet so strongly and endearingly exhibited in his song. They love him, because he loved his own order, nor ever desired for a single hour to quit it. They love him, because he loved the very humblest condition of humanity, where every thing good was only the more commended to his manly mind by disadvantages of social position. They love him, because he saw with just anger, how much the judgments of "silly coward man" are determined by such accidents, to the neglect or contempt of native worth. They love him for his independence. What wonder! To be brought into contact with rank and wealth--a world inviting to ambition, and tempting to a thousand desires--and to choose rather to remain lowly and poor, than seek an easier or a brighter lot, by courting favour from the rich and great--was a legitimate ground of pride, if any ground of pride be legitimate. He gave a tongue to this pride, and the boast is inscribed in words of fire in the Manual of the Poor. It was an exuberant feeling, as all his feelings were exuberant, and he let them all overflow. But sometimes, forsooth! he did not express them in sufficiently polite or courteous phrase! And that too was well. He stood up not for himself only, but for the great class to which he belonged, and which in his days--and too often in ours--had been insulted by the pride of superior station, when unsupported by personal merit, to every bold peasant a thing of scorn. They love him, because he vindicated the ways of God to man, by showing that there was more genius and virtue in huts, than was dreamt of in the world's philosophy. They love him for his truthful pictures of the poor. Not there are seen slaves sullenly labouring, or madly leaping in their chains; but in nature's bondage, content with their toil, sedate in their sufferings, in their recreations full of mirth--are seen Free Men. The portraiture, upon the whole, is felt by us--and they know it--to demand at times pity as a due; but challenges always respect, and more than respect, for the condition which it glorifies. The Land of Burns! What mean we by the words? Something more, surely, than that Fortune, in mere blindness, had produced a great poet here? We look for the inspiring landscape, and here it is; but what could all its beauties have availed, had not a people inhabited it possessing all the sentiments, thoughts, aspirations, to which nature willed to give a voice in him of her choicest melody? Nothing prodigious, after all, in the birth of such a poet among such a people. Was any thing greater in the son than the austere resignation of the father? In his humble compeers there was much of the same tender affection, sturdy independence, strong sense, self-reliance, as in him; and so has Scotland been prolific, throughout her lower orders, of men who have made a figure in her literature and her history; but to Burns nature gave a finer organization, a more powerful heart, and an ampler brain, imbued with that mystery we call genius, and he stands forth conspicuous above all her sons.

From the character I have sketched of the Scottish people, of old and at this day, it might perhaps be expected that much of their poetry would be of a stern, fierce, or even ferocious kind--the poetry of bloodshed and destruction. Yet not so. Ballads enow, indeed, there are, embued with the true warlike spirit--narrative of exploits of heroes. But many a fragmentary verse, preserved by its own beauty, survives to prove that gentlest poetry has ever been the produce both of heathery mountain and broomy brae; but the names of the sweet singers are heard no more, and the plough has gone over their graves. And they had their music too, plaintive or dirge-like, as it sighed for the absent, or wailed for the dead. The fragments were caught up, as they floated about in decay; and by him, the sweetest lyrist of them all, were often revivified by a happy word that let in a soul, or, by a few touches of his genius, the fragment became a whole, so exquisitely moulded, that none may tell what lines belong to Burns, and what to the poet of ancient days. They all belong to him now, for but for him they would have perished utterly; while his own matchless lyrics, altogether original, find the breath of life on the lips of a people who have gotten them all by heart. What a triumph of the divine faculty thus to translate the inarticulate language of nature into every answering modulation of human speech! And with such felicity, that the verse is now as national as the music! Throughout all these exquisite songs, we see the power of an element which we, raised by rank and education into ignorance, might not have surmised in the mind of the people. The love-songs of Burns are prominent in the poetry of the world by their purity. Love, truly felt and understood, in the bosom of a Scottish peasant, has produced a crowd of strains which are owned for the genuine and chaste language of the passion, by highly as well as by lowly born--by cultured and by ruder minds--that may charm in haughty saloons, not less than under smoke-blackened roofs. Impassioned beyond all the songs of passion, yet, in the fearless fervour of remembered transports, pure as hymeneals; and dear, therefore, for ever to Scottish maidens in hours when hearts are wooed and won; dear, therefore, for ever to Scottish matrons, who, at household work, are happy to hear them from their daughters' lips. And he, too, is the Poet of their friendships. At stanzas instinct with blythe and cordial amities, more brotherly the grasp of peasant's in peasant's toil-hardened hands! The kindliness of their nature, not chilled, though oppressed with care, how ready at his bidding--at the repeated air of a few exquisite but unsought-for words of his--to start up all alive! He is the Poet of all their humanities. His Daisy has made all the flowers of Scotland dear. His moorland has its wild inhabitants, whose cry is sweet. For sake of the old dumb fellow-servant which his farmer gratefully addresses on entering on another year of labour, how many of its kind have been fed or spared? In the winter storm 'tis useless to think of the sailor on his slippery shrouds; but the "outland eerie cattle" he teaches his feres to care for in the drifting snow. In what jocund strains he celebrates their amusements, their recreations, their festivals, passionately pursued with all their pith by a people in the business of life grave and determined as if it left no hours for play! Gait, dress, domicile, furniture, throughout all his poetry, are Scottish as their dialect; and sometimes, in the pride of his heart, he rejoices by such nationality to provoke some alien's smile. The sickle, the scythe, and the flail, the spade, the mattock, and the hoe, have been taken up more cheerfully by many a toil-worn cottar, because of the poetry with which Burns has invested the very implements of labour. Now and then, too, here and there peals forth the clangour of the war-trumpet. But Burns is not, in the vulgar sense, a military poet; nor are the Scottish, in a vulgar sense, a military people. He and they best love tranquil scenes and the secure peace of home. They are prompt for war, if war be needed--no more. Therefore two or three glorious strains he has that call to the martial virtue quiescent in their bosoms--echoes from the warfare of their ancient self-deliverance--menacings--a prophetical _Nemo me impune lacesset_, should a future foe dare to insult the beloved soil. So nourishes his poetry all that is tender and all that is stern in the national character. So does it inspire his people with pride and contentment in their own peculiar lot; and as _that_ is at once both poetical and practical patriotism, the poet who thus lightens and brightens it is the best of patriots.

I have been speaking of Burns as the poet of the country--and his is the rural, the rustic muse. But we know well that the charm of his poetry has equal power for the inhabitants of towns and cities. Occupations, familiar objects, habitual thoughts, are indeed very different for the two great divisions of the people; but there is a brotherhood both of consanguinity and of lot. Labour--the hand pledged to constant toil--the daily support of life, won by its daily wrestle with a seemingly adverse but friendly necessity--in these they are all commoners with one another. He who cheers, who solaces, who inspirits, who honours, who exalts the lot of the labourer, is the poet alike of all the sons of industry. The mechanic who inhabits a smoky atmosphere, and in whose ear an unwholesome din from workshop and thoroughfare rings hourly, hangs from his rafter the caged linnet; and the strain that should gush free from blossomed or green bough, that should mix in the murmur of the brook, mixes in and consoles the perpetual noise of the loom or the forge. Thus Burns sings more especially to those whose manner of life he entirely shares; but he sings a precious memento to those who walk in other and less pleasant ways. Give then the people knowledge, without stint, for it nurtures the soul. But let us never forget, that the mind of man has other cravings--that it draws nourishment from thoughts, beautiful and tender, such as lay reviving dews on the drooping fancy, and are needed the more by him to whom they are not wafted fresh from the face of nature. This virtue of these pastoral and rural strains to penetrate and permeate conditions of existence different from those in which they had their origin, appears wheresoever we follow them. In the mine, in the dungeon, upon the great waters, in remote lands under fiery skies, Burns's poetry goes with his countrymen. Faithfully portrayed, the image of Scotland lives there; and thus she holds, more palpably felt, her hand upon the hearts of her children, whom the constraint of fortune or ambitious enterprise carries afar from the natal shores. Unrepining and unrepentant exiles, to whom the haunting recollection of hearth and field breathes in that dearest poetry, not with homesick sinkings of heart, but with home-invigorated hopes that the day will come when their eyes shall have their desire, and their feet again feel the greensward and the heather-bent of Scotland. Thus is there but one soul in this our great National Festival; while to swell the multitudes that from morning light continued flocking towards old Ayr, till at mid-day they gathered into one mighty mass in front of Burns's Monument, came enthusiastic crowds from countless villages and towns, from our metropolis, and from the great City of the West, along with the sons of the soil dwelling all round the breezy uplands of Kyle, and in regions that stretch away to the stormy mountains of Morven.

Sons of Burns! Inheritors of the name which we proudly revere, you claim in the glad solemnity which now unites us, a privileged and more fondly affectionate part. To the honour with which we would deck the memory of your father, your presence, and that of your respected relatives, nor less that of her sitting in honour by their side, who, though not of his blood, did the duties of a daughter at his dying bed, give an impressive living reality; and while we pay this tribute to the poet, whose glory, beyond that of any other, we blend with the renown of Scotland, it is a satisfaction to us, that we pour not out our praises in the dull cold ear of death. Your lives have been past for many years asunder; and now that you are freed from the duties that kept you so long from one another, your intercourse, wherever and whenever permitted by your respective lots to be renewed, will derive additional enjoyment from the recollection of this day--a sacred day indeed to brothers, dwelling--even if apart--in unity and peace. And there is one whose warmest feelings, I have the best reason to know, are now with you and us, as well on your own account as for the sake of your great parent, whose character he respects as much as he admires his genius, though it has pleased Heaven to visit him with such affliction as might well deaden even in such a heart as his all satisfaction even with this festival. But two years ago, and James Burnes was the proud and happy father of three sons, all worthy of their race. One only now survives; and may he in due time return from India to be a comfort, if but for a short, a sacred season, to his old age! But Sir Alexander Burnes--a name that will not die--and his gallant brother have perished, as all the world knows, in the flower of their life--foully murdered in a barbarous land. For them many eyes have wept; and their country, whom they served so faithfully, deplores them among her devoted heroes. Our sympathy may not soothe such grief as his; yet it will not be refused, coming to him along with our sorrow for the honoured dead. Such a father of such sons has far other consolations.

In no other way more acceptable to yourselves could I hope to welcome you, than by thus striving to give an imperfect utterance to some of the many thoughts and feelings that have been crowding into my mind and heart concerning your father. And I have felt all along that there was not only no impropriety in my doing so, after the address of our Noble Chairman, but that it was even the more required of me that I should speak in a kindred spirit, by that very address, altogether so worthy of his high character, and so admirably appropriate to the purpose of this memorable day. Not now for the first time, by many times, has he shown how well he understands the ties by which, in a country like this, men of high are connected with men of humble birth, and how amply he is endowed with the qualities that best secure attachment between the Castle and the Cottage. We rise to welcome you to your Father's land.

Mr ROBERT BURNS replied in the following terms:--My lord, and ladies and gentlemen, You may be assured that the sons of Burns feel all that they ought to feel on an occasion so peculiarly gratifying to them, and on account of so nobly generous a welcome to the Banks of Doon. In whatever land they have wandered--wherever they have gone--they have invariably found a kind reception prepared for them by the genius and fame of their father; and, under the providence of Almighty God, they owe to the admirers of his genius all that they have, and what competencies they now enjoy. We have no claim to attention individually--we are all aware that genius, and more particularly poetic genius, is not hereditary, and in this case the mantle of Elijah has not descended upon Elisha. The sons of Burns have grateful hearts, and will remember, so long as they live, the honour which has this day been conferred upon them by the noble and the illustrious of our own land, and many generous and kind spirits from other lands--some from the far West, a country composed of the great and the free, and altogether a kindred people. We beg to return our most heartfelt thanks to this numerous and highly respectable company for the honour which has been done us this day.

Sir JOHN M'NEILL spoke as follows:--My lord, ladies, and gentlemen--We have now accomplished the main purpose of this assembly. We have done honour to the memory of Burns, and have welcomed his sons to the land of their father. After the address--which I may be permitted to call the address of manly eloquence--which you have heard from our Noble Chairman; after the oration--which I may be permitted to designate as solemn and beautiful--which you have heard from our worthy Vice-chairman--I should be inexcusable were I to detain you long with the subject which has been entrusted to me. The range of English poetry is so vast--it is profuse in so many beauties and excellences, and many of its great names are approached with so much habitual veneration, that I feel great diffidence and difficulty in addressing you on a subject on which my opinions can have little weight, and my judgment is no authority; but to you, whose minds have been stirred with the lofty thoughts of the Poets of England, and are familiar with their beauties, nothing is needed to stimulate you to admire that which I am sure has been the object of your continual admiration, and the subject of your unfailing delight. We have been sometimes accused of a nationality which is too narrow and exclusive; but I hope and believe that the accusation is founded on misapprehension of our feelings. It is true that, as Scotsmen, we love Scotland above every other spot on earth--that we love it as our early home, and our father's house. We cherish our feelings of nationality as we cherish our domestic affections, of which they are in truth a part. But while we have these feelings, we glory in the might and the majesty of that great country, with which, for the happiness of both, we have long been united as one nation. We are proud of the victories of Cressy, of Agincourt, and of Poictiers, as if they had been won by our own ancestors. And I may venture to say there is not in this great assembly one who is not proud that he can claim to be the countryman of Spenser, and Shakspeare, and Milton, and Wordsworth, and of every one in that long list of glorious Englishmen, who have shed a lustre and conferred a dignity upon our language more bright and more majestic than illuminates and exalts the living literature of any other land. There is, I think, in the history of the progress of the human intellect, nothing more surprising than the sudden growth of literature in England to the summit of its excellence. No sooner had tranquillity been restored after the long civil wars of the Roses--no sooner had men's minds been set free to enter the fields of speculation opened up by the Reformation, than in the short space of the life of one man--than in the space of seventy years, there arose such men as Spenser, and Milton, and Shakspeare, and Sydney, and Raleigh, and Bacon, and Hobbes, and Cudworth, and a whole phalanx of other great men, inferior only to them in the brightness of original genius. How glorious must have been the soil which could bring to maturity a harvest of such teeming abundance! There are probably many among us who can even now remember with exultation when the first ray of light was cast on their minds from the genius of Spenser--as the first glimmering of day comes to him whose sealed eyes are opened to the light of heaven, discovering objects at first dimly and then more clearly, we at length gazed in wonder and in joy on a creation vaster far, and far more lovely, than it had entered into our hearts to conceive. And if, in our maturer years, we return to live an hour with him in the regions of fairyland that enchanted our youth--if some of the flowers seem less bright, if the murmur of the waters is a more pensive sound, if a soberer light pervade the scene, and if some of the illusions are broken for ever, we still discover in every stanza beauties which escaped our earlier observation, and we never lose our relish for that rich play of fancy, like the eastern fountain, whose spray descends in pearls and in gems. But, above all, when we look upon him with mature feelings, we can appreciate that lofty strain of godly philosophy which he, the father of our poetry, bequeathed, and which has been followed by his successors. When we call to mind the influence produced on a people by the poetry of a nation--when we call to mind that whatever is desired to be inculcated, whether for good or for evil, the power of poetry has been employed to advance it, even from the times when the Monarch-Minstrel of Israel glorified his Maker in Psalms, to the latest attempts which have been made to propagate treason, immorality, or atheism--when we thus think of these things, we may learn how much of gratitude is due to those men who, having had the precious ointment of poetic genius poured abundantly on their heads, have felt and acknowledged that they were thereby consecrated to the cause of virtue--who have never forgotten that there was a time when

"The sacred name
Of poet and of prophet was the same."

Such men are Spenser, Milton--such is Wordsworth. Of Milton I shall not venture to speak. He stands alone in his sanctuary, which I would not profane even by imperfect praise. But it is my duty to speak of Wordsworth. Dwelling in his high and lofty philosophy, he finds nothing that God has made common or unclean--he finds nothing in human society too humble, nothing in external nature too lowly, to be made the fit exponents of the bounty and goodness of the Most High. In the loftier aspirations of such a mind, there must be much that is obscure to every inferior intelligence; and it may be that its vast expanse can only be but dimly visible--it may be that the clouds of incense rising from the altar may veil from common eyes some portion of the stately temple they perfume; but we pity the man who should therefore close his eyes on a scene of beauty and sublimity, or turn back from the threshold of the noble edifice in which he has been invited to survey the majesty of creative genius, and where he will be taught to find "Books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every thing."

"Blessings be with them, and eternal praise,
The poets who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays."

--"Wordsworth and the Poets of England."

HENRY GLASSFORD BELL, Esq., advocate, said--My lord, I feel it to be a great distinction and privilege to have been requested to take a part in the proceedings of this day. It is a day which will not soon pass from the recollection of those who have partaken in its admirably-conducted festivities. In assembling to do honour to the memory of Burns, in no idle or frivolous spirit, but impressed with those elevated emotions which have so plainly animated the whole of this mighty gathering, we have a right to feel that we do honour to ourselves as individuals, and as a nation. Our assembling has been prompted by a love of all that is purest and best in our national genius, as represented by our national poet. It has been prompted, too, by that indomitable love of our native land which Burns felt and sang--a love founded on admiration, which grows with our growth and strengthens with our strength, of all that external nature here presents to us--on profound respect for our inestimable and time-hallowed institutions; and in never-dying delight in all that kindred spirits have here shared with us--in all that higher spirits have here achieved for us. No poet ever possessed greater influence in disseminating and strengthening such sentiments, than Burns. My lord, it has been well said that wherever an humble artisan, in the crowded haunts of labour or of trade, feels a consciousness of his own dignity--is stirred with a desire for the beautiful, or haunted with a dream of knowledge, or learns to appreciate the distinction between the "guinea's stamp" and the "gowd," _there_ the royal and gentle spirit of Robert Burns, lion-like in its boldness, and dove-like in its tenderness, still glows, elevates, and inspires. This spirit is also here, and has been evidenced in many ways; perhaps in none more than in this, that in doing honour to the genius of Burns, we are irresistibly led to acknowledge, and speak of the debts we owe to the intellectual achievements of other great minds, not in Scotland only, but in the sister countries. We have just heard, from the eloquent lips of Sir John M'Neill, the well-deserved praises of the English bards. Will this meeting refuse a similar cup of welcome, and of thanks, to the poets of Green Erin? Will this meeting, where so many bright eyes rain influence, and manly hearts beat high, not hail with simultaneous delight the name of one who shines conspicuous as the very poet of youth, of love, and of beauty--the poet, with deference be it spoken, of better things than even beauty--of gentle thoughts and exquisite associations, that give additional sweetness to the twilight hour, and to the enjoyments of home a more endearing loveliness; the poet, too, of his own high-souled country, through whose harp the common breeze of Ireland changes, as it passes, into articulate melody--a harp that will never be permitted to hang mute on Tara's walls, as long as

"Erin! the tear and the smile in thine eye
Blend like the rainbow that melts in thy sky!"

How many voices have to-day murmured a wish that he were here! But the echo of the acclaim with which we greet the name of Moore will reach him in his solitude, and he will feel, what Burns died too young to feel, that it is something worth living for to have gained a nation's gratitude. Of Maturin and others now dead, I must not pause to speak. But let me be privileged to express, in name of this meeting, our respect and admiration for the best of the living dramatists--one deeply imbued with the spirit of the Elizabethan age--one who has rescued our stage from the reproach which seemed ready to fall upon it--one to whose exuberant poetical fertility, and bold originality of thought, we are indebted for such beautiful creations as "Virginius" and "William Tell," the "Hunchback" and the "Love Chase,"--our valued friend, James Sheridan Knowles. And I might have stopped here, had it not been that I have to-day seen that not the gifted sons alone, but also some of the gifted daughters of Ireland, have come as pilgrims to the shrine of Burns; that one in particular, one of the most distinguished of that fair sisterhood who give, by their talents, additional lustre to the genius of the present day, has paid her first visit to Scotland, that she might be present on this occasion, and whom have myself seen moved even to tears by the glory of the gathering. She is one who has lately thrown additional light on the antiquities, manners, scenery, and beautiful traditions of Ireland--one, whose graceful and truly feminine works are known to us all, and whom we are proud to see among us--Mrs S. C. Hall. My lord, feebly and briefly as I have spoken of these great names, I must not trespass longer on your time, but beg to propose the health of "Moore and the Irish Poets."

ARCHIBALD ALISON, Esq., Sheriff of Lanarkshire, spoke as follows:--We have listened with admiration to the eloquent strains in which the first in rank and the first in genius have proposed the memory of the immortal bard whose genius we are this day assembled to celebrate; but I know not whether the toast which I have now to propose, has not equal claims to our enthusiasm. Your kindness and that of the committee, has intrusted to me the memory of three illustrious men--the far-famed successors of Burns, who have drank deep at the fountains of his genius, and proved themselves the worthy inheritors of his inspiration. And Scotland, I rejoice to say, can claim them all as her own. For if the Tweed has been immortalized by the grave of Scott, the Clyde can boast the birthplace of Campbell, and the mountains of the Dee first inspired the muse of Byron. I rejoice at that burst of patriotic feeling--I hail it as a presage, that as Ayrshire has raised a graceful monument to Burns, and Edinburgh has erected a noble structure to the Author of Waverley, so Glasgow will ere long raise a worthy tribute to the bard whose name will never die while Hope pours its balm through the human heart; and Aberdeen will worthily commemorate the far-famed traveller, who first inhaled the inspiration of nature amidst the clouds of Loch-nagarr, and afterwards poured the light of his genius over those lands of the sun where his descending orb set--

"Not as in northern climes obscurely bright,
But one unclouded blaze of living light."

Scotland, my lord, may well be proud of such men, but she can no longer call these exclusively her own; their names have become household words in every land. Mankind claims them as the common inheritance of the human race. Look around us, and we shall see on every side decisive proofs how far and wide admiration for their genius has sunk in the hearts of man. What is it that attracts strangers from every part of the world into this distant land, and has more than compensated a remote situation and a churlish soil, and given to our own Northern Isle a splendour unknown to the regions of the sun? What is it which has brought together this mighty assemblage, and united the ardent and the generous from every part of the world, from the Ural mountains to the banks of the Mississippi, on the shores of an island in the Atlantic? My lord, it is neither the magnificence of our cities, nor the beauty of our valleys, the animation of our harbours, nor the stillness of our mountains; it is neither our sounding cataracts, nor our spreading lakes; neither the wilds of nature we have subdued so strenuously, nor the blue hills we have loved so well. These beauties, great as they are, have been equaled in other lands; these marvels, wondrous though they be, have parallels in other climes. It is the genius of her sons which has given Scotland her proud pre-eminence; this it is, more even than the shades of Bruce, of Wallace, and of Mary, which has rendered her scenes classic ground to the whole civilized world, and now brings pilgrims from the most distant parts of the earth, as on this day, to worship at the shrine of genius.

"Yet Albyn! yet the praise be thine,
Thy scenes with story to combine;
Thou bid'st him who by Roslin strays
List to the tale of other days.
Midst Cartlane crags thou showest the cave,
The refuge of thy champion brave;
Giving each rock a storied tale,
Pouring a lay through every dale;
Knitting, as with a moral band,
Thy story to thy native land;
Combining thus the interest high
Which genius lends to beauty's eye!"

But, my lord, the poet who conceived those beautiful lines, has himself done more than all our ancestors' valour to immortalize the land of his birth; for he has united the interest of truth with the charms of fiction, and peopled the realm not only with the shadows of time, but the creations of genius. In those brilliant creations, as in the glassy wave, we behold mirrored the lights, the shadows, the forms of reality; and yet

"So pure, so fair, the mirror gave,
As if there lay beneath the wave,
Secure from trouble, toil, and care,
A world than earthly world more fair."

Years have rolled on, but they have taken nothing, they have added much to the fame of those illustrious men.

"Time but the impression deeper makes,
As streams their channels deeper wear."

The voice of ages has spoken: it has given Campbell and Byron the highest place with Burns in lyric poetry, and destined Scott

"To rival all but Shakspeare's name below."