Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

"At length his lonely cot appears in view,
Beneath the shelter of an aged tree;
Th' expectant wee-things, toddlin', stacher through
To meet their Dad, wi' flichterin' noise and glee.

His wee bit ingle, blinkin' bonnilie,
His clean hearth-stane, his thrifty wifie's smile,
The lisping infant prattling on his knee,
Does a' his weary carking cares beguile,
And makes him quite forget his labour an' his toil."

And in the same poem, after having described the courtship, Burns bursts into this perfect flower:

"O happy love! where love like this is found!
O heart-felt raptures! bliss beyond compare!
I've pacèd much this weary, mortal round,
And sage experience bids me this declare:
If Heaven a draught of heavenly pleasure spare
One cordial in this melancholy vale,
'Tis when a youthful, loving, modest pair,
In other's arms, breathe out the tender tale
Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the ev'ning gale."

Is there in the world a more beautiful--a more touching picture than the old couple sitting by the ingleside with clasped hands, and the pure, patient, loving old wife saying to the white-haired man who won her heart when the world was young:

"John Anderson, my jo, John,
When we were first acquent;
Your locks were like the raven,
Your bonnie brow was brent;
But now your brow is beld, John,
Your locks are like the snaw;
But blessings on your frosty pow,
John Anderson, my jo.

"John Anderson, my jo, John,
We clamb the hill thegither;
And monie a canty day, John,
We've had wi' ane anither;
Now we maun totter down, John,
But hand in hand we'll go,
And sleep thegither at the foot,
John Anderson, my jo."

Burns taught that the love of wife and children was the highest--that to toil for them was the noblest.

"The sacred lowe o' weel placed love,
Luxuriantly indulge it;
But never tempt the illicit rove,
Though naething should divulge it."

"I waine the quantum of the sin,
The hazzard o'concealing;
But och! it hardens all within,
And petrifies the feeling."

"To make a happy fireside clime
To weans and wife,
That's the true pathos, and sublime,
Of human life."

FRIENDSHIP.

He was the poet of friendship:

"Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to min'?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days o' auld lang syne?"

Wherever those who speak the English language assemble--wherever the Anglo-Saxon people meet with clasp and smile--these words are given to the air.

SCOTCH DRINK.

The poet of good Scotch drink, of merry meetings, of the cup that cheers, author of the best drinking song in the world:

"O, Willie brew'd a peck o' maut,
And Rob and Allen came to see;
Three blyther hearts, that lee-lang night,
Ye wadna find in Christendie.

Chorus.

"We are na fou, we're no that fou,
But just a drappie in our ee;
The cock may craw, the day may daw,
And aye we'll taste the barley bree.

"Here are we met, three merry boys,
Three merry boys, I trow, are we;
And monie a night we've merry been,
And monie mae we hope to be!

We are na fou, &c.

"It is the moon, I ken her horn,
That's blinkin in the lift say hie;
She shines sae bright to wyle us hame,
But by my sooth she'll wait a wee!

We are na fou, &c.

"Wha first shall rise to gang awa,
A cuckold, coward loun is he!
Wha last beside his chair shall fa',
He is the King amang us three!

We are na fou, &c."

POETS BORN, NOT MADE.

He did not think the poet could be made--that colleges could furnish feeling, capacity, genius. He gave his opinion of these manufactured minstrels:

"A set o' dull, conceited hashes,
Confuse their brains in college classes!
They gang in stirks, and come out asses,
Plain truth to speak;
An' syne they think to climb Parnassus
By dint o' Greek!"

"Gie me ane spark o' Nature's fire,
That's a' the learning I desire;
Then tho' I drudge thro' dub an' mire
At pleugh or cart,
My Muse, though hamely in attire,
May touch the heart."

BURNS, THE ARTIST.

He was an artist--a painter of pictures.

This of the brook:

"Whyles owre a linn the burnie plays,
As thro' the glen it wimpl't;
Whyles round a rocky scaur it strays;
Whyles in a wiel it dimpl't;
Whyles glitter's to the nightly rays,
Wi' bickering, dancing dazzle;
Whyles cookit underneath the braes,
Below the spreading hazel,
Unseen that night."

Or this from Tam O'Shanter:

"But pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed,
Or, like the snow falls in the river,
A moment white--then melts forever;
Or, like the borealis race,
That flit ere you can point their place;
Or, like the rainbow's lovely form,
Evanishing amid the storm."

This:

"As in the bosom of the stream
The moon-beam dwells at dewy e'en;
So, trembling, pure, was tender love,
Within the breast o' bonnie Jean."

"The sun had clos'd the winter day,
The Curlers quat their roarin play,
An' hunger's Maukin ta'en her way
To kail-yards green,
While faithless snaws ilk step betray
Whare she had been."

"O, sweet are Coila's haughs an' woods,
When lintwhites chant amang the buds,
And jinkin' hares, in amorous whids,
Their loves enjoy,
While thro' the braes the cushat croons
Wi' wailfu' cry!"

"Ev'n winter bleak has charms to me
When winds rave thro' the naked tree;
Or frosts on hills of Ochiltree
Are hoary gray;
Or blinding drifts wild-furious flee,
Dark'ning the day!"

This of the lark and daisy--the daintiest and nearest perfect in our language:

"Alas! it's no' thy neebor sweet,
The bonnie Lark, companion meet!
Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet!
Wi' spreckl'd breast,
When upward-springing, blythe, to greet
The purpling east."

A REAL DEMOCRAT.

He was in every fibre of his being a sincere democrat. He was a believer in the people--in the sacred rights of man. He believed that honest peasants were superior to titled parasites. He knew the so-called "gentrv" of his time.

In one of his letters to Dr. Moore is this passage: "It takes a few dashes into the world to give the young great man that proper, decent, unnoticing disregard for the poor, insignificant, stupid devils--the mechanics and peasantry around him--who were born in the same village."

He knew the infinitely cruel spirit of caste--a spirit that despises the useful--the children of toil--those who bear the burdens of the world.

"If I'm design'd yon lordling's slave,
By nature's law design'd,
Why was an independent wish
E'er planted in my mind?

If not, why am I subject to .
His cruelty, or scorn?
Or why has man the will and pow'r
To make his fellow mourn?"

Against the political injustice of his time--against the artificial distinctions among men by which the lowest were regarded as the highest--he protested in the great poem, "A man's a man for a' that," every line of which came like lava from his heart.

"Is there, for honest poverty,
That hangs his head, and a' that?
The coward-slave, we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, and a' that,
Our toils obscure, and a' that;
The rank is but the guinea stamp;
The man's the gowd for a' that."

"What tho' on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hodden-gray, and a' that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
A man's a man for a' that.
For a' that, and a' that,
Their tinsel show, and a' that;
The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor,
Is king o' men for a' that."

"Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord,
Wha struts, and stares, and a' that;
Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof for a' that;
For a' that, and a' that,
His riband, star, and a' that,
The man' o' independent mind,
He looks and laughs at a' that."

"A prince can mak' a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, and a' that;
But an honest man's aboon his might,
Guid faith he mauna fa' that!
For a' that, and a' that,
Their dignities, and a' that,
The pith o' sense, and pride o' worth,
Are higher ranks than a' that.

"Then let us pray that come it may,
As come it will for a' that;
That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth,
May bear the gree and a' that.
For a' that, and a' that;
It's cornin' yet for a' that
That man to man, the warld o'er,
Shall brithers be for a' that."

No grander declaration of independence was ever uttered. It stirs the blood like a declaration of war. It is the apotheosis of honesty, independence, sense and worth. And it is a prophecy of that better day when men will be brothers the world over.

HIS THEOLOGY.

Burns was superior in heart and brain to the theologians of his time. He knew that the creed of Calvin was infinitely cruel and absurd, and he attacked it with every weapon that his brain could forge.

He was not awed by the clergy, and he cared nothing for what was called "authority." He insisted on thinking for himself. Sometimes he faltered, and now and then, fearing that some friend might take offence, he would say or write a word in favor of the Bible, and sometimes he praised the Scriptures in words of scorn.

He laughed at the dogma of eternal pain--at hell as described by the preacher:

"A vast, unbottom'd, boundless pit,
Fill'd fou o' lowin' brunstane,
Wha's ragin' flame an' scorchin' heat
Wad melt the hardest whun-stane!
The half asleep start up wi' fear,
An' think they hear it roarin',
When presently it does appear,
'Twas but some neebor snorin'.
Asleep that day."

The dear old doctrine that man is totally depraved, that morality is a snare--a flowery path leading to perdition--excited the indignation of Burns. He put the doctrine in verse:

"Morality, thou deadly bane,
Thy tens o' thousands thou hast slain!
Vain is his hope, whose stay and trust is
In moral mercy, truth and justice."
He understood the hypocrites of his day:
"Hypocrisy, in mercy spare it!
That holy robe, O dinna tear it!
Spare't for their sakes wha aften wear it,
The lads in black;
But your curst wit, when it comes near it,
Rives't aff their back."

"Then orthodoxy yet may prance,
And Learning in a woody dance,
And that fell cur ca'd Common Sense,
That bites sae sair,
Be banish'd owre the seas to France;
Let him bark there."

"They talk religion in their mouth;
They talk o' mercy, grace, an' truth,
For what? to gie their malice skouth On some puir wight,
An' hunt him down, o'er right an' ruth,
To ruin straight."

"Doctor Mac, Doctor Mac,
Ye should stretch on a rack,
To strike evil doers wi' terror;
To join faith and sense Upon any pretence,
Was heretic damnable error,
Doctor Mac,
Was heretic damnable error."

But the greatest, the sharpest, the deadliest, the keenest, the wittiest thing ever said or written against Calvinism is Holy Willie's Prayer:--

"O Thou, wha in the Heavens dost dwell,
Wha, as it pleases best thysel',
Sends ane to heaven and ten to hell,
A' for thy glory,
And no for onie guid or ill
They've done afore thee!

"I bless and praise thy matchless might,
When thousands thou has left in night,
That I am here afore thy sight
For gifts an' grace,
A burnin' an' a shinin' light,
To a' this place.

"What was I, or my generation,
That I should get sic exaltation?
I, wha deserve sic just damnation,
For broken laws,
Five thousand years 'fore my creation,
Thro' Adam's cause?

"When frae my mither's womb I fell,
Thou might hae plunged me into hell,
To gnash my gums, to weep and wail,
In burnin' lake,
Where damnèd devils roar and yell,
Chained to a stake.

"Yet I am here a chosen sample,
To show Thy grace is great and ample;
I'm here a pillar in Thy temple,
Strong as a rock,
A guide, a buckler, an example
To a' Thy flock."

In this poem you will find the creed stated just as it is--with fairness and accuracy--and at the same time stated so perfectly that its absurdity fills the mind with inextinguishable laughter.

In this poem Burns nailed Calvinism to the cross, put it on the rack, subjected it to every instrument of torture, flayed it alive, burned it at the stake, and scattered its ashes to the winds.

In 1787 Burns wrote this curious letter to Miss Chalmers:

"I have taken tooth and nail to the Bible, and have got through the five books of Moses and half way in Joshua.

"It is really a glorious book."

This must have been written in the spirit of Voltaire.

Think of Burns, with his loving, tender heart, half way in Joshua, standing in blood to his knees, surrounded by the mangled bodies of old men, women and babes, the swords of the victors dripping with innocent blood, shouting--"This is really a glorious sight."

A letter written on the seventh of March, 1788, contains the clearest, broadest and most philosophical statement of the religion of Burns to be found in his works:

"An honest man has nothing to fear. If we lie down in the grave, the whole man a piece of broken machinery, to moulder with the clods of the valley--be it so; at least there is an end of pain and care, woes and wants. If that part of us called Mind does survive the apparent destruction of the man, away with old-wife prejudices and tales!

"Every age and every nation has a different set of stories; and, as the many are always weak, of consequence they have often, perhaps always, been deceived.

"A man conscious of having acted an honest part among his fellow creatures, even granting that he may have been the sport at times of passions and instincts, he goes to a great Unknown Being, who could have had no other end in giving him existence but to make him happy; who gave him those passions and instincts and well knows their force.

"These, my worthy friend, are my ideas.

"It becomes a man of sense to think for himself, particularly in a case where all men are equally interested, and where, indeed, all men are equally in the dark."

"Religious nonsense is the most nonsensical nonsense."

"Why has a religious turn of mind always a tendency to narrow and harden the heart?"

"All my fears and cares are for this world."

We have grown tired of gods and goddesses in art. Milton's heavenly militia excites our laughter. Light-houses have driven sirens from the dangerous coasts. We have found that we do not depend on the imagination for wonders--there are millions of miracles under our feet.

Nothing can be more marvelous than the common and everyday facts of life. The phantoms have been cast aside. Men and women are enough for men and women. In their lives is all the tragedy and all the comedy that they can comprehend.

The painter no longer crowds his canvas with the winged and impossible--he paints life as he sees it, people as he knows them, and in whom he is interested. "The Angelus," the perfection of pathos, is nothing but two peasants bending their heads in thankfulness as they hear the solemn sound of the distant bell--two peasants, who have nothing to be thankful for--nothing but weariness and want, nothing but the crusts that they soften with their tears--nothing. And yet as you look at that picture you feel that they have something besides to be thankful for--that they have life, love, and hope--and so the distant bell makes music in their simple hearts.

Let me give you the difference between culture and nature--between educated talent and real genius.

A little while ago one of the great poets died. I was reading some of his volumes and during the same period was reading a little from Robert Burns. And the difference between these two poets struck me forcibly.

Tennyson was a piece of rare china decorated by the highest art.

Burns was made of honest, human clay, moulded by sympathy and love.

Tennyson dwelt in his fancy, for the most part, with kings and queens, with lords and ladies, with knights and nobles.

Burns lingered by the fireside of the poor and humble, in the thatched cottage of the peasant, with the imprisoned and despised. He loved men and women in spite of their titles, and without regard to the outward. Through robes and rags he saw and loved the man.

Tennyson was touched by place and power, the insignia given by chance or birth. As he grew old he grew narrower, lost interest in the race, and gave his heart to the class to which he had been lowered as a reward for melodious flattery.

Burns broadened and ripened with the flight of his few years. His sympathies widened and increased to the last.

Tennyson had the art born of intellectual taste, of the sense of mental proportion, knowing the color of adjectives and the gradations of emphasis. His pictures were born in his brain, exquisitely shaded by details, carefully wrought by painful and conscious art.

Burns's brain was the servant of his heart. His melody was a rhythm taught by love. He was touched by the miseries, the injustice, the agony of his time. While Tennyson wrote of the past--of kings long dead, of ladies who had been dust for many centuries, Burns melted with his love the walls of caste--the cruel walls that divide the rich and the poor.

Tennyson celebrated the birth of royal babes, the death of the titled useless; gave wings to degraded dust, wearing the laurels given by those who lived upon the toil of men whom they despised. Burns poured poems from his heart, filled with tears and sobs for the suffering poor; poems that helped to break the chains of millions; poems that the enfranchised love to repeat; poems that liberty loves to hear.

Tennyson was the poet of the past, of the twilight, of the sunset, of decorous regret, of the vanished glories of barbarous times, of the age of chivalry in which great nobles clad in steel smote to death with battle axe and sword the unarmed peasants of the field.

Burns was the poet of the dawn, glad that the night was fading from the east. He kept his face toward the sunrise, caring nothing for the midnight of the past, but loved with all the depth and sincerity of his nature the few great souls--the lustrous stars--that darkness cannot quench.

Tennyson was surrounded with what gold can give, touched with the selfishness of wealth. He was educated at Oxford, and had what are called the advantages of his time, and in maturer years was somewhat swayed by the spirit of caste, by the descendants of the ancient Pharisees, and at last became a lord.

Burns had but little knowledge of the world. What he knew was taught him by his sympathies. Being a genius, he absorbed the good and noble of which he heard or dreamed, and thus he happily outgrew the smaller things with which he came in contact, and journeyed toward the great--the wider world, until he reached the end.

Tennyson was what is called religious. He believed in the divinity of decorum, not falling on his face before the Eternal King, but bowing gracefully, as all lords should, while uttering thanks for favors partly undeserved, and thanks more fervid still for those to come.

Burns had the deepest and the tenderest feelings in his heart. The winding stream, the flowering shrub, the shady vale--these were trysting places where the real God met those he loved, and where his spirit prompted thoughts and words of thankfulness and praise, took from their hearts the dross of selfishness and hate, leaving the gold of love.

In the religion of Burns, form was nothing, creed was nothing, feeling was everything. He had the religious climate of the soul, the April that receives the seed, the June of blossom, and the month of harvest.

Burns was a real poet of nature. He put fields and woods in his lines. There were principles like oaks, and there were thoughts, hints and suggestions as shy as violets beneath the withered leaves. There were the warmth of home, the social virtues born of equal state, that touched the heart and softened grief; that make breaches in the cruel walls of pride; that make the rich and poor clasp hands and feel like comrades, warm and true.

The house in which his spirit lived was not large. It enclosed only space enough for common needs, built near the barren land of want; but through the open door the sunlight streamed, and from its windows all the stars were seen, while in the garden grew the common flowers--the flowers that all the ages through have been the messengers of honest love; and in the fields were heard the rustling corn, and reapers songs, telling of well-requited toil; and there were trees whose branches rose and fell and swayed while birds filled all the air with music born of joy. He read with tear-filled eyes the human page, and found within his breast the history of hearts.

Tennyson's imagination lived in a palace ample, wondrous fair, with dome and spire and galleries, where eyes of proud old pedigree grew dim with gazing at the portraits of the worthless dead; and there were parks and labyrinths of walks and ways and artificial lakes where sailed the "double swans;" and there were flowers from far-off lands with strange perfume, and men and women of the grander sort, telling of better days and nobler deeds than men in these poor times of commerce, trade and toil have hearts to do; and, yet, from this fair dwelling--too vast, too finely wrought, to be a home--he uttered wondrous words, painting pictures that will never fade, and told, with every aid of art, old tales of love and war, sometimes beguiling men of tears, enchanting all with melody of speech, and sometimes rousing blood and planting seeds of high resolve and noble deeds; and sometimes thoughts were woven like tapestries in patterns beautiful, involved and strange, where dreams and fancies interlaced like tendrils of a vine, like harmonies that wander and return to catch the music of the central theme, yet cold as traceries in frost wrought on glass by winter's subtle art.

Tennyson was ingenious--Burns ingenuous. One was exclusive, and in his exclusiveness a little disdain. The other pressed the world against his heart.

Tennyson touched art on many sides, dealing with vast poetic themes, and satisfied in many ways the intellectual tastes of cultured men.

Tennyson is always perfectly self-possessed. He has poetic sympathy, but not the fire and flame. No one thinks of him as having been excited, as being borne away by passion's storm. His pulse never rises. In artistic calm, he turns, polishes, perfects, embroiders and beautifies. In him there is nothing of the storm and chaos, nothing of the creative genius, no sea wrought to fury, filling the heavens with its shattered cry.

Burns dwelt with simple things--with those that touch the heart; that tell of joy; that spring from labor done; that lift the burdens of despair from fainting souls; that soften hearts until the pearls of pity fall from eyes unused to weep.

To illustrate his thought, he used the things he knew--the things familiar to the world--not caring for the vanished things--the legends told by artful tongues to artless ears--but clinging to the common things of life and love and death, adorning them with countless gems; and, over all, he placed the bow of hope.

With him the man was greater than the king, the woman than the queen. The greatest were the noblest, and the noblest were those who loved their fellow-men the best, the ones who filled their lives with generous deeds. Men admire Tennyson. Men love Robert Burns.

He was a believer in God, and had confidence that this God was sitting at the loom weaving with warp and woof of cause and effect, of fear and fancy, pain and hope, of dream and shadows, of despair and death, mingled with the light of love, the tapestries in which at last all souls will see that all was perfect from the first. He believed or hoped that the spirit of infinite goodness, soft as the autumn air, filled all of heaven's dome with love.

Such a religion is easy to understand when it includes all races through all times. It is consistent, if not with the highest thought, with the deepest and the tenderest feelings of the heart.

FROM CRADLE TO COFFIN.

There is no time to follow the steps of Burns from old Alloway, by the Bonnie Doon in the clay-built hut, where the January wind blew hansel in on Robin--to Mt. Oliphant, with its cold and stingy soil, the hard factor, whose letters made the children weep--working in the fields, or tired with "The thresher's weary flinging tree," where he was thrilled, for the first time with love's sweet pain that set his heart to music.

To Lochlea, still giving wings to thought--still working in the unproductive fields, Lochlea where his father died, and reached the rest that life denied.

To Mossgiel, where Burns reached the top and summit of his art and wrote like one enrapt, inspired. Here he met and loved and gave to immortality his Highland Mary.

To Edinburgh and fame, and back to Mauchline to Jean Armour and honor, the noblest deed of all his life.

To Ellisland, by the winding Nith.

To Dumfries, a poor exciseman, wearing out his heart in the disgusting details of degrading drudgery--suspected of treason because he preferred Washington to Pitt--because he sympathized with the French Revolution--because he was glad that the American colonies had become a free nation.

At a banquet once, being asked to drink the health of Pitt, Burns said: "I will give you a better toast--George Washington." A little while after, when they wanted him to drink to the success of the English arms, Burns said: "No; I will drink this: May their success equal the justice of their cause." He sent three or four little cannon to the French Convention, because he sympathized with the French Revolution, and because of these little things, his love of liberty, of freedom and justice, at Dumfries he was suspected of being a traitor, and, as a result of these trivial things, as a result of that suspicion, Burns was obliged to join the Dumfries volunteers.

How pitiful that the author of "Scots wha hae with Wallace bled," should be thought an enemy of Scotland!

Poor Burns! Old and broken before his time--surrounded by the walking lumps of Dumfries' clay!

To appease the anger of his fellow-citizens--to convince them that he was a patriot, he actually joined the Dumfries volunteers,--bought his uniform on credit--amount about seven pounds--was unable to pay--was threatened with arrest and a jail by Matthew Penn.

These threats embittered his last hours.

A little while before his death, he said: "Do not let that awkward squad--the Dumfries volunteers--fire over my grave." We have a true insight into what his feelings were. But they fired. They were bound to fire or die.

The last words uttered by Robert Burns were these: "That damned scoundrel Matthew Penn."

Burns had another art, the art of ending--of stopping at the right place. Nothing is more difficult than this. It is hard to end a play--to get the right kind of roof on a house. Not one story-teller in a thousand knows just the spot where the rocket should explode. They go on talking after the stick has fallen.

Burns wrote short poems, and why? All great poems are short. There cannot be a long poem any more than there can be a long joke. I believe the best example of an ending perfectly accomplished you will find in his "Vision."

There comes into his house, into that "auld clay biggin," his muse, the spirit of a beautiful woman, and tells him what he can do, and what he can't do, as a poet. He has a long talk with her and now the thing is how to get her out of the house. You may think that it is an easy thing. It is easy to get yourself into difficulty, but not to get out.

I was struck with the beautiful manner in which Burns got that angel out of the house.

Nothing could be happier than the ending of the "Vision"--the leave-taking of the Muse:

"And wear thou this, she solemn said,
And bound the holly round my head:
The polished leaves and berries red
Did rustling play;
And, like a passing thought she fled.
In light away."

How that man rose above all his fellows in death! Do you know, there is something wonderful in death. What a repose! What a piece of sculpture! The common man dead looks royal; a genius dead, sublime.

When a few years ago I visited all the places where Burns had been, from the little house of clay with one room where he was born, to the little house with one room where he now sleeps, I thought of this. Yes, I visited them all, all the places made immortal by his genius, the field where love first touched his heart, the field where he ploughed up the home of the Mouse. I saw the cottage where Robert and Jean first lived as man and wife, and walked on "the banks and braes of Bonnie Doon." And when I stood by his grave, I said: This man was a radical, a real genuine man. This man believed in the dignity of labor, in the nobility of the useful. This man believed in human love, in making a heaven here, in judging men by their deeds instead of creeds and titles. This man believed in the liberty of the soul, of thought and speech. This man believed in the sacred rights of the individual; he sympathized with the suffering and oppressed. This man had the genius to change suffering and toil into song, to enrich poverty, to make a peasant feel like a prince of the blood, to fill the lives of the lowly with love and light. This man had the genius to make robes of glory out of squalid rags. This man had the genius to make Cleopatras, and Sapphos and Helens out of the freckled girls of the villages and fields--and he had the genius to make Auld Ayr, and Bonnie Doon, and Sweet Afton and the Winding Nith murmur the name of Robert Burns forever.

This man left a legacy of glory to Scotland and the whole world; he enriched our language, and with a generous hand scattered the gems of thought. This man was the companion of poverty, and wept the tears of grief, and yet he has caused millions to shed the happy tears of joy.

His heart blossomed in a thousand songs--songs for all times and all seasons--suited to every experience of the heart--songs for the dawn of love--for the glance and clasp and kiss of courtship--for "favors secret, sweet and precious"--for the glow and flame, the ecstasy and rapture of wedded life--songs of parting and despair--songs of hope and simple joy--songs for the vanished days--songs for birth and burial--songs for wild war's deadly blast, and songs for gentle peace--songs for the dying and the dead--songs for labor and content--songs for the spinning wheel, the sickle and the plow--songs for sunshine and for storm, for laughter and for tears--songs that will be sung as long as language lives and passion sways the heart of man.

And when I was at his birth-place, at that little clay house where he was born, standing in that sacred place, I wrote these lines:

Though Scotland boasts a thousand names,
Of patriot, king and peer,
The noblest, grandest of them all,
Was loved and cradled here.
Here lived the gentle peasant-prince,
The loving cotter-king,
Compared with whom the greatest lord
Is but a titled thing.

'Tis but a cot roofed in with straw,
A hovel made of clay;
One door shuts out the snow and storm,
One window greets the day;
And yet I stand within this room,
And hold all thrones in scorn;
For here beneath this lowly thatch,
Love's sweetest bard was born.

Within this hallowed hut I feel
Like one who clasps a shrine,
When the glad lips at last have touched
The something deemed divine.
And here the world through all the years,
As long as day returns,
The tribute of its love and tears,
Will pay to Robert Burns.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

I.

ON the 12th of February, 1809, two babes were born--one in the woods of Kentucky, amid the hardships and poverty of pioneers; one in England, surrounded by wealth and culture. One was educated in the University of Nature, the other at Cambridge.

One associated his name with the enfranchisement of labor, with the emancipation of millions, with the salvation of the Republic. He is known to us as Abraham Lincoln.

The other broke the chains of superstition and filled the world with intellectual light, and he is known as Charles Darwin.

Nothing is grander than to break chains from the bodies of men--nothing nobler than to destroy the phantoms of the soul.

Because of these two men the nineteenth century is illustrious.

A few men and women make a nation glorious--Shakespeare made England immortal, Voltaire civilized and humanized France; Goethe, Schiller and Humboldt lifted Germany into the light. Angelo, Raphael, Galileo and Bruno crowned with fadeless laurel the Italian brow, and now the most precious treasure of the Great Republic is the memory of Abraham Lincoln.

Every generation has its heroes, its iconoclasts, its pioneers, its ideals. The people always have been and still are divided, at least into classes--the many, who with their backs to the sunrise worship the past, and the few, who keep their faces toward the dawn--the many, who are satisfied with the world as it is; the few, who labor and suffer for the future, for those to be, and who seek to rescue the oppressed, to destroy the cruel distinctions of caste, and to civilize mankind.

Yet it sometimes happens that the liberator of one age becomes the oppressor of the next. His reputation becomes so great--he is so revered and worshiped--that his followers, in his name, attack the hero who endeavors to take another step in advance.

The heroes of the Revolution, forgetting the justice for which they fought, put chains upon the limbs of others, and in their names the lovers of liberty were denounced as ingrates and traitors.

During the Revolution our fathers to justify their rebellion dug down to the bed-rock of human rights and planted their standard there. They declared that all men were entitled to liberty and that government derived its power from the consent of the governed. But when victory came, the great principles were forgotten and chains were put upon the limbs of men. Both of the great political parties were controlled by greed and selfishness. Both were the defenders and protectors of slavery. For nearly three-quarters of a century these parties had control of the Republic. The principal object of both parties was the protection of the infamous institution. Both were eager to secure the Southern vote and both sacrificed principle and honor upon the altar of success.

At last the Whig party died and the Republican was born. This party was opposed to the further extension of slavery. The Democratic party of the South wished to make the "divine institution" national--while the Democrats of the North wanted the question decided by each territory for itself.

Each of these parties had conservatives and extremists. The extremists of the Democratic party were in the rear and wished to go back; the extremists of the Republican party were in the front, and wished to go forward. The extreme Democrat was willing to destroy the Union for the sake of slavery, and the extreme Republican was willing to destroy the Union for the sake of liberty.

Neither party could succeed without the votes of its extremists.

This was the condition in 1858-60.

When Lincoln was a child his parents removed from Kentucky to Indiana. A few trees were felled--a log hut open to the south, no floor, no window, was built--a little land plowed and here the Lincolns lived. Here the patient, thoughtful, silent, loving mother died--died in the wide forest as a leaf dies, leaving nothing to her son but the memory of her love.

In a few years the family moved to Illinois. Lincoln then almost grown, clad in skins, with no woven stitch upon his body--walking and driving the cattle. Another farm was opened--a few acres subdued and enough raised to keep the wolf from the door. Lincoln quit the farm--went down the Ohio and Mississippi as a hand on a flat-boat--afterward clerked in a country store--then in partnership with another bought the store--failed. Nothing left but a few debts--learned the art of surveying--made about half a living and paid something on the debts--read law--admitted to the bar--tried a few small cases--nominated for the Legislature and made a speech.

This speech was in favor of a tariff, not only for revenue, but to encourage American manufacturers and to protect American workingmen. Lincoln knew then as well as we do now, that everything, to the limits of the possible, that Americans use should be produced by the energy, skill and ingenuity of Americans. He knew that the more industries we had, the greater variety of things we made, the greater would be the development of the American brain. And he knew that great men and great women are the best things that a nation can produce,--the finest crop a country can possibly raise.

He knew that a nation that sells raw material will grow ignorant and poor, while the people who manufacture will grow intelligent and rich. To dig, to chop, to plow, requires more muscle than mind, more strength than thought.

To invent, to manufacture, to take advantage of the forces of nature--this requires thought, talent, genius. This develops the brain and gives wings to the imagination.

It is better for Americans to purchase from Americans, even if the things purchased cost more.

If we purchase a ton of steel rails from England for twenty dollars, then we have the rails and England the money; But if we buy a ton of steel rails from an American for twenty-five dollars, then America has both the rails and the money.

Judging from the present universal depression and the recent elections, Lincoln, in his first speech, stood on solid rock and was absolutely right. Lincoln was educated in the University of Nature--educated by cloud and star--by field and winding stream--by billowed plains and solemn forests--by morning's birth and death of day--by storm and night--by the ever eager Spring--by Summer's wealth of leaf and vine and flower--the sad and transient glories of the Autumn woods--and Winter, builder of home and fireside, and whose storms without, create the social warmth within.

He was perfectly acquainted with the political questions of the day--heard them discussed at taverns and country stores, at voting places and courts and on the stump. He knew all the arguments for and against, and no man of his time was better equipped for intellectual conflict. He knew the average mind--the thoughts of the people, the hopes and prejudices of his fellow-men. He had the power of accurate statement. He was logical, candid and sincere. In addition, he had the "touch of nature that makes the whole world kin."

In 1858 he was a candidate for the Senate against Stephen A. Douglas.

The extreme Democrats would not vote for Douglas, but the extreme Republicans did vote for Lincoln. Lincoln occupied the middle ground, and was the compromise candidate of his own party. He had lived for many years in the intellectual territory of compromise--in a part of our country settled by Northern and Southern men--where Northern and Southern ideas met, and the ideas of the two sections were brought together and compared.

The sympathies of Lincoln, his ties of kindred, were with the South. His convictions, his sense of justice, and his ideals, were with the North. He knew the horrors of slavery, and he felt the unspeakable ecstasies and glories of freedom. He had the kindness, the gentleness, of true greatness, and he could not have been a master; he had the manhood and independence of true greatness, and he could not have been a slave. He was just, and was incapable of putting a burden upon others that he himself would not willingly bear.

He was merciful and profound, and it was not necessary for him to read the history of the world to know that liberty and slavery could not live in the same nation, or in the same brain. Lincoln was a statesman.. And there is this difference between a politician and a statesman. A politician schemes and works in every way to make the people do something for him. A statesman wishes to do something for the people. With him place and power are means to an end, and the end is the good of his country.

In this campaign Lincoln demonstrated three things--first, that he was the intellectual superior of his opponent; second, that he was right; and third, that a majority of the voters of Illinois were on his side.

II.

IN 1860 the Republic reached a crisis. The conflict between liberty and slavery could no longer be delayed. For three-quarters of a century the forces had been gathering for the battle.

After the Revolution, principle was sacrificed for the sake of gain. The Constitution contradicted the Declaration. Liberty as a principle was held in contempt. Slavery took possession of the Government. Slavery made the laws, corrupted courts, dominated Presidents and demoralized the people.

I do not hold the South responsible for slavery any more than I do the North. The fact is, that individuals and nations act as they must. There is no chance. Back of every event--of every hope, prejudice, fancy and dream--of every opinion and belief--of every vice and virtue--of every smile and curse, is the efficient cause. The present moment is the child, and the necessary child, of all the past.

Northern politicians wanted office, and so they defended slavery; Northern merchants wanted to sell their goods to the South, and so they were the enemies of freedom. The preacher wished to please the people who paid his salary, and so he denounced the slave for not being satisfied with the position in which the good God had placed him.

The respectable, the rich, the prosperous, the holders of and the seekers for office, held liberty in contempt. They regarded the Constitution as far more sacred than the rights of men. Candidates for the presidency were applauded because they had tried to make slave States of free territory, and the highest court solemnly and ignorantly decided that colored men and women had no rights. Men who insisted that freedom was better than slavery, and that mothers should not be robbed of their babes, were hated, despised and mobbed. Mr. Douglas voiced the feelings of millions when he declared that he did not care whether slavery was voted up or down. Upon this question the people, a majority of them, were almost savages. Honor, manhood, conscience, principle--all sacrificed for the sake of gain or office.

From the heights of philosophy--standing above the contending hosts, above the prejudices, the sentimentalities of the day--Lincoln was great enough and brave enough and wise enough to utter these prophetic words:

"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this Government cannot permanently endure half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all the one thing or the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it further until it becomes alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South."

This declaration was the standard around which gathered the grandest political party the world has ever seen, and this declaration made Lincoln the leader of that vast host.

In this, the first great crisis, Lincoln uttered the victorious truth that made him the foremost man in the Republic.

The Republican party nominated him for the presidency and the people decided at the polls that a house divided against itself could not stand, and that slavery had cursed soul and soil enough.

It is not a common thing to elect a really great man to fill the highest official position. I do not say that the great Presidents have been chosen by accident. Probably it would be better to say that they were the favorites of a happy chance.

The average man is afraid of genius. He feels as an awkward man feels in the presence of a sleight-of-hand performer. He admires and suspects. Genius appears to carry too much sail--to lack prudence, has too much courage. The ballast of dullness inspires confidence.

By a happy chance Lincoln was nominated and elected in spite of his fitness--and the patient, gentle, just and loving man was called upon to bear as great a burden as man has ever borne.

III.

THEN came another crisis--the crisis of Secession and Civil war.

Again Lincoln spoke the deepest feeling and the highest thought of the Nation. In his first message he said:

"The central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy."

He also showed conclusively that the North and South, in spite of secession, must remain face to face--that physically they could not separate--that they must have more or less commerce, and that this commerce must be carried on either between the two sections as friends, or as aliens.

This situation and its consequences he pointed out to absolute perfection in these words:

"Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws among friends?"

After having stated fully and fairly the philosophy of the conflict, after having said enough to satisfy any calm and thoughtful mind, he addressed himself to the hearts of America. Probably there are few finer passages in literature than the close of Lincoln's inaugural address:

"I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break, our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory stretching from every battlefield and patriotic grave to every loving heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

These noble, these touching, these pathetic words, were delivered in the presence of rebellion, in the midst of spies and conspirators--surrounded by but few friends, most of whom were unknown, and some of whom were wavering in their fidelity--at a time when secession was arrogant and organized, when patriotism was silent, and when, to quote the expressive words of Lincoln himself, "Sinners were calling the righteous to repentance."

When Lincoln became President, he was held in contempt by the South--underrated by the North and East--not appreciated even by his cabinet--and yet he was not only one of the wisest, but one of the shrewdest of mankind. Knowing that he had the right to enforce the laws of the Union in all parts of the United States, and Territories--knowing, as he did, that the secessionists were in the wrong, he also knew that they had sympathizers not only in the North, but in other lands.

Consequently, he felt that it was of the utmost importance that the South should fire the first shot, should do some act that would solidify the North, and gain for us the justification of the civilized world.

He proposed to give food to the soldiers at Sumter. He asked the advice of all his cabinet on this question, and all, with the exception of Montgomery Blair, answered in the negative, giving their reasons in writing. In spite of this, Lincoln took his own course--endeavored to send the supplies, and while thus engaged, doing his simple duty, the South commenced actual hostilities and fired on the fort. The course pursued by Lincoln was absolutely right, and the act of the South to a great extent solidified the North, and gained for the Republic the justification of a great number of people in other lands.

At that time Lincoln appreciated the scope and consequences of the impending conflict. Above all other thoughts in his mind was this:

"This conflict will settle the question, at least for centuries to come, whether man is capable of governing himself, and consequently is of greater importance to the free than to the enslaved."

He knew what depended on the issue and he said: "We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last, best hope of earth."

HEN came a crisis in the North. It became clearer and clearer to Lincoln's mind, day by day, that the Rebellion was slavery, and that it was necessary to keep the border States on the side of the Union. For this purpose he proposed a scheme of emancipation and colonization--a scheme by which the owners of slaves should be paid the full value of what they called their "property."

He knew that if the border States agreed to gradual emancipation, and received compensation for their slaves, they would be forever lost to the Confederacy, whether secession succeeded or not. It was objected at the time, by some, that the scheme was far too expensive; but Lincoln, wiser than his advisers--far wiser than his enemies--demonstrated that from an economical point of view, his course was best.

IV.

He proposed that $400 be paid for slaves, including men, women and children. This was a large price, and yet he showed how much cheaper it was to purchase than to carry on the war.

At that time, at the price mentioned, there were about $750,000 worth of slaves in Delaware. The cost of carrying on the war was at least two millions of dollars a day, and for one-third of one day's expenses, all the slaves in Delaware could be purchased. He also showed that all the slaves in Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri could be bought, at the same price, for less than the expense of carrying on the war for eighty-seven days.

This was the wisest thing that could have been proposed, and yet such was the madness of the South, such the indignation of the North, that the advice was unheeded.

Again, in July, 1862, he urged on the Representatives of the border States a scheme of gradual compensated emancipation; but the Representatives were too deaf to hear, too blind to see.

Lincoln always hated slavery, and yet he felt the obligations and duties of his position. In his first message he assured the South that the laws, including the most odious of all--the law for the return of fugitive slaves--would be enforced. The South would not hear. Afterward he proposed to purchase the slaves of the border States, but the proposition was hardly discussed--hardly heard. Events came thick and fast; theories gave way to facts, and everything was left to force.

The extreme Democrat of the North was fearful that slavery might be destroyed, that the Constitution might be broken, and that Lincoln, after all, could not be trusted; and at the same time the radical Republican feared that Lincoln loved the Union more than he did liberty.

The fact is, that he tried to discharge the obligations of his great office, knowing from the first that slavery must perish. The course pursued by Lincoln was so gentle, so kind and persistent, so wise and logical, that millions of Northern Democrats sprang to the defence, not only of the Union, but of his administration. Lincoln refused to be led or hurried by Fremont or Hunter, by Greeley or Sumner. From first to last he was the real leader, and he kept step with events.

V.

ON the 22d of July, 1862, Lincoln sent word to the members of his cabinet that he wished to see them. It so happened that Secretary Chase was the first to arrive. He found Lincoln reading a book. Looking up from the page, the President said: "Chase, did you ever read this book?" "What book is it?" asked Chase. "Artemus Ward," replied Lincoln. "Let me read you this chapter, entitled '_Wax Wurx in Albany_.'" And so he began reading while the other members of the cabinet one by one came in. At last Stanton told Mr. Lincoln that he was in a great hurry, and if any business was to be done he would like to do it at once. Whereupon Mr. Lincoln laid down the open book, opened a drawer, took out a paper and said: "Gentlemen, I have called you together to notify you what I have determined to do. I want no advice. Nothing can change my mind."