THE BANQUET.

The company began to enter the Pavilion almost immediately after the

close of the Procession, and the chair was taken about two o'clock. The

Pavilion was erected in a field of twenty-two acres, adjoining to the

Monument, and was a magnificent building. It measured not less than 120

feet by 110, forming nearly a perfect square. The roof, supported by two

rows of pillars, was covered with waterproof felt, and the building

inside was lined with white cloth, festooned with crimson. In the centre

of the roof was a radiation of the same colours. The tables and seats

were arranged in parallel lines from the head to the foot of the

apartment, rising with a gentle inclination from the middle on both

sides. At each end there was an elevated table for the Chairman,

Croupier, and their respective supporters; and on the two remaining

sides of the square there were _vis-a-vis_ galleries for the

instrumental band and glee-singers, a pianoforte for the accompaniment

to Mr Templeton being placed in front of the latter, at which Mr Blewitt

took his station. Mr Templeton, between the speeches, sang, with great

power and sweetness, appropriate songs from Burns; and Mr Blewitt's

performance was admirable. Mr Wilson came from Paris to the Festival;

but unfortunately was prevented by severe illness from delighting the

assembly with his exquisite strains. The hall was lighted by twenty-two

glass windows, shaded with white cloth. The chairman and croupier's

seats were of oak, made of the rafters of Alloway Kirk; and several

splendid silver vases decorated their tables. The hall was seated to

accommodate 2000 persons, and was entirely filled, although not

inconveniently crowded.

The distinguishing feature of the pavilion was the number of ladies who

were present. A great room exclusively filled with men, is at best a

dull and sombre spectacle; and so far from social, that it always

conveys to us a gross idea of selfishness. The mere scenic effect on

this occasion was immensely heightened by the adoption of the polite

rule; nor can it be doubted that the tone of the meeting underwent a

similar improvement.

The Chairman, the Right Hon. the Earl of Eglinton, was supported on the

right by Robert Burns, Esq., late of the Stamps and Taxes, Somerset

House, London, eldest son of the poet; Major Burns, youngest son of the

poet; Miss Begg, niece of the poet; Henry Glassford Bell, Esq.,

Sheriff-Substitute of Lanarkshire; Rev. Mr Cuthill, Ayr; Mr Robert Burns

Begg, teacher, Kinross, nephew of the poet; Miss Begg, the younger niece

of the poet; Mr and Mrs Thomson of Dumfries, (the latter the Jessie

Lewars of the bard, who tended his deathbed;)--on the left, by Colonel

Burns, second son of the poet; Mrs Begg, sister of the poet; Sir John

M'Neill, Bart., late Plenipotentiary to the Court of Persia; the Right

Hon. Lord Justice-General; the Countess of Eglinton; Sir D. H. Blair,

Bart., of Blairquhan. The Croupier, Professor Wilson, was supported on

the right by Archibald Alison, Esq., Sheriff of Lanarkshire, and author

of the History of Europe; Colonel Mure of Caldwell, author of Travels in

Greece; William E. Aytoun, Esq., Advocate; A. Hastie, Esq., M.P. for

Paisley; Jas. Oswald, Esq., M.P. for Glasgow;--on the left by Sir James

Campbell, Glasgow; Provost Miller, Ayr; James Ballantine, Esq. of

Castlehill; Charles Mackay, Esq., London; James Campbell, Esq. of

Craigie.

The Rev. Mr CUTHILL of Ayr asked the blessing.

The Earl of EGLINTON, after the usual loyal toasts, rose and spoke as

follows:--Ladies and gentlemen, The subject of the toast which I have

now the honour to bring before your notice, is one of such paramount

importance on this occasion, and is so deeply interesting, not only to

those whom I am addressing, but to all to whom genius is dear, that I

could have wished that it had been committed to more worthy hands; more

especially when I see the great assemblage collected here--the

distinguished persons who grace our board to-day. It is only because I

conceive that my official position renders me the most formal and

fitting, though most inefficient, mouthpiece of the inhabitants of this

county, that I have ventured to present myself before you on this

occasion, and to undertake the onerous, though most gratifying, duty of

proposing, in such an assemblage, the thrilling toast--"The Memory of

Burns." This is not a meeting for the purpose of recreation and

amusement--it is not a banquet at which a certain number of toasts are

placed on paper, which must be received with due marks of

approbation--it is the enthusiastic desire of a whole people to pay

honour to their greatest countryman. It is the spontaneous outpouring of

a nation's feeling towards the illustrious dead, and the wish to extend

the hand of welcome and of friendship to those whom he has left behind.

Here on the very spot where the Poet first drew breath, on the very

ground which his genius has hallowed, beside the Old Kirk which his

verse has immortalized, beneath the monument which an admiring and

repentant people have raised to his memory, we meet after the lapse of

years, to pay our homage at the shrine of genius. The master mind who

has sung the "Isle of Palms"--who has revelled in the immortal

"Noctes"--and who has already done that justice to the memory of Burns

which a brother poet alone can do--Christopher himself is here, anxious

to pay his tribute of admiration to a kindred spirit. The historian who

has depicted, with a Gibbon's hand, the eventful period of the French

empire, and the glorious victories of Wellington, is here--a Clio, as it

were, offering a garland to Erato. The distinguished head of the

Scottish bench is here. In short, every town and every district, every

class and every age, has come forward to pay homage to their poet. The

honest lads whom he so praised, and whose greatest boast it is that they

belong to the land of Burns, are here. The fair lasses whom he so loved

and sung, have flocked hither to justify, by their loveliness, their

poet's words. While the descendant of those who dwelt in the "Castle o'

Montgomerie," feels himself only too highly honoured by being permitted

to propose the memory of him who wandered then unknown along the banks

of Fail. How little could the pious old man who dwelt in yon humble

cottage, when he read the "big ha' bible"--"his lyart haffets wearing

thin and bare"--have guessed that the infant prattling on his knee was

to be the pride and admiration of his country; that that infant was to

be enrolled a chief among the poetic band; that he was to take his place

as one of the brightest planets that glitter round the mighty sun of the

Bard of Avon! In originality second to none, in the fervent expression

of deep feeling, and in the keen perception of the beauties of nature,

equal to any who ever reveled in the bright fairyland of poesy, well may

we rejoice that Burns is our own--well may we rejoice that no other land

can claim to be the birthplace of our Homer except the hallowed spot on

which we stand! Oh! that he could have foreseen the futurity of fame he

has created to himself--oh! that he could have foreseen this day, when

the poet and the historian, the manly and the fair, the peer and the

peasant, vie with each other in paying their tribute of admiration to

the untaught but mighty genius whom we hail as the first of Scottish

poets! It might have alleviated the dreary days of his sojourn at

Mossgiel--it might have lightened the last hours of his pilgrimage upon

earth. And well does he deserve such homage. He who portrayed the

"Cottar's Saturday Night" in strains that are unrivaled in simplicity,

and yet fervour--in solemnity, and in truth--He who breathed forth the

patriotic words which tell of the glories of Wallace, and immortalize

alike the poet and the hero--He who culled inspiration from the modest

daisy, and yet thundered forth the heroic strains of "The Song of

Death"--He who murmured words which appear the very incarnation of

poetry and of love, and yet hurled forth the bitterest shafts of

satire--a Poet by the hand of nature, despising, as it were, the rules

of art, and yet triumphing over those very rules which he set at

nought--at whose name every Scottish heart beats high--whose name has

become a household word in the cottage as in the palace--to whom shall

we pay our homage, of whom shall we be proud, if it is not our own

immortal Burns? But I feel that I am detaining you too long. I feel

that, in the presence of a Wilson and an Alison, I am not a fit person

to dilate upon the genius of Burns. I am but an admirer of the poet like

yourselves. There are those present who are brother poets and kindred

geniuses--men who, like Burns, have gained for themselves a glorious

immortality. To them will I commit the grateful task of more fully

displaying before you, decked out by their eloquence, the excellences of

the poet, the genius of the man, and to welcome his sons to the land of

their father: and I will only ask you, in their presence--on the ground

which his genius has rendered sacred--on the "banks and braes o' bonny

Doon"--to join with me in drinking an overflowing bumper, and giving it

every expression of enthusiasm which you can, to "The Memory of Burns!"

Mr ROBERT BURNS rose along with his brothers, and was received with

enthusiastic cheering. He said--My lord, ladies, and gentlemen, Of

course it cannot be expected, at a meeting such as the present, that the

sons of Burns should expatiate on the merits and genius of their

deceased father. Around them are an immense number of admirers, who, by

their presence here this day, bear a sufficient testimony to the opinion

in which they hold his memory, and the high esteem in which they hold

his genius. In the language of the late Sir Christopher Wren, though

very differently applied, the sons of Burns can say, that to obtain a

living testimony to their father's genius they have only to look around

them. I beg, in name of my aunt, brothers, and myself, to return our

heartfelt and grateful thanks for the honour that has this day been paid

to my father's memory.

PROFESSOR WILSON then rose and said--Were this Festival but to

commemorate the genius of Burns, and it were asked, what need now for

such commemoration, since his fame is coextensive with the literature of

the land, and enshrined in every household? I might answer, that

although admiration of the poet be wide as the world, yet we, his

compatriots, to whom he is especially dear, rejoice to see the universal

sentiment concentered in one great assemblage of his own people: that we

meet in thousands and tens of thousands to honour him, who delights each

single one of us at his own hearth. But this commemoration expresses,

too, if not a profounder, a more tender sentiment; for it is to welcome

his sons to the land he has illustrated, so that we may at once indulge

our national pride in a great name, and gratify in filial hearts the

most pious of affections. There was, in former times, a custom of

crowning great poets. No such ovation honoured our bard, though he too

tasted of human applause, felt its delights, and knew the trials that

attend it. Which would Burns himself have preferred, a celebration like

this in his lifetime, or fifty years after his death? I venture to say,

he would have preferred the posthumous as the finer incense. The honour

and its object are then seen in juster proportion; for death confers an

elevation which the candid soul of the poet would have considered, and

such honour he would rather have reserved for his manes, than have

encountered it with his living infirmities. And could he have foreseen

the day, when they for whom at times he was sorely troubled, should,

after many years of separation, return to the hut where himself was

born, and near it, within the shadow of his monument, be welcomed for

his sake by the lords and ladies of the land; and--dearer thought still

to his manly breast--by the children and the children's children of

people of his own degree, whose hearts he sought to thrill by his first

voice of inspiration; surely had the Vision been sweeter to his soul

than even that immortal one, in which the Genius of the Land bound the

holly round his head, the lyric crown that it will wear for ever.

Of his three Sons sitting here, one only can remember their father's

face--those large lustrous eyes of his, so full of many meanings, as

they darkened in thought, melted in melancholy, or kindled in mirth, but

never turned on his children, or on their excellent mother, but with one

of tender or intense affection. That son may even on this day have

remembrance of his father's head, with its dark clusters not unmixed

with gray, and those eyes closed, lying upon the bed of death. Nor,

should it for a moment placidly appear, is such image unsuitable to this

festival. For in bidding welcome to his sons to their father's land, I

feel that, while you have conferred on me a high honour, you have

likewise imposed on me a solemn duty; and, however inadequately I may

discharge it, I trust that in nought shall I do any violence to the

spirit either of humanity or of truth.

I shall speak reverently of Burns's character in hearing of his sons;

but not even in their hearing must I forget what is due always to

established judgment of the everlasting right. Like all other mortal

beings; he had his faults--great even in the eyes of men--grievous in

the eyes of Heaven. Never are they to be thought of without sorrow, were

it but for the misery with which he himself repented them. But as there

is a moral in every man's life, even in its outward condition

imperfectly understood, how much more affecting when we read it in

confessions wrung out by remorse from the greatly gifted, the gloriously

endowed! But it is not his faults that are remembered here--assuredly

not these we meet to honour. To deny error to be error, or to extenuate

its blame, _that_ makes the outrage upon sacred truth; but to forget

that it exists, or if not wholly so, to think of it along with that

under-current of melancholy emotion at all times accompanying our

meditations on the mixed characters of men--_that_ is not only

allowable, but it is ordered--it is a privilege dear to humanity--and

well indeed might he tremble for himself who should in this be deaf to

the voice of nature crying from the tomb.

And mark how graciously in this does time aid the inclinations of

charity! Its shadows soften what they may not hide. In the distance,

discordances that once jarred painfully on our ears are now

undistinguishable--lost in the music sweet and solemn, that comes from

afar with the sound of a great man's name. It is consolatory to see,

that the faults of them whom their people honour grow fainter and

fainter in the national memory, while their virtues wax brighter and

more bright; and if injustice have been done to them in life, (and who

now shall dare to deny that cruelest injustice was done to Burns?) each

succeeding generation becomes more and more dutiful to the

dead--desirous to repair the wrong by profounder homage. As it is by his

virtues that man may best hope to live in the memory of man, is there

not something unnatural, something monstrous, in seeking to eternize

here below, that of which the proper doom is obscurity and oblivion? How

beneficent thus becomes the power of example! The good that men do then

indeed "lives after them"--all that was ethereal in their being alone

survives--and thus ought our cherished memories of our best men--and

Burns was among our best--to be invested with all consistent

excellences; for far better may their virtues instruct us by the love

which they inspire, than ever could their vices by aversion.

To dwell on the goodnesses of the great shows that we are at least

lovers of virtue--that we may ourselves be aspiring to reach her serene

abodes. But to dwell on their faults, and still more to ransack that we

may record them, _that_ is the low industry of envy, which, grown into a

habit, becomes malice, at once hardening and embittering the heart.

Such, beyond all doubt, in the case of our great poet, was the source of

many "a malignant truth and lie," fondly penned, and carefully corrected

for the press, by a class of calumniators that may never be extinct;

for, by very antipathy of nature, the mean hate the magnanimous, the

groveling them who soar. And thus, for many a year, we heard "souls

ignoble born to be forgot" vehemently expostulating with some puny

phantom of their own heated fancy, as if _it_ were the majestic shade of

Burns evoked from his Mausoleum for contumely and insult.

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."

Their names now shine in unapproachable splendour, far removed, like the

fixed stars, from the clouds and the rivalry of a lower world. To the

end of time they will maintain their exalted station. Never will the

cultivated traveller traverse the sea of Archipelago, that the "Isles of

Greece, the Isles of Greece," will not recur to his recollection; never

will he approach the shores of Loch Katrine, that the image of Ellen

Douglas will not be present to his memory; never will he gaze on the

cliffs of Britain, that he will not thrill at the exploits of the

"Mariners of England, who guard our native seas." Whence has arisen this

great, this universally acknowledged celebrity? My lord, it is hard to

say whether we have most to admire the brilliancy of their fancy or the

creations of their genius, the beauty of their verses or the magic of

their language, the elevation of their thoughts or the pathos of their

conceptions. But there is one whose recent death we all deplore, but who

has lighted "the torch of Hope at nature's funeral pile," who has gained

a yet higher inspiration. In Campbell it is the moral purposes to which

he has directed his mighty powers which is the real secret of his

success, the lofty objects to which he has devoted his life, which have

proved his passport to immortality. It is because he has unceasingly

contended for the best interests of humanity, because he has ever

asserted the dignity of the human soul, because he has never forgotten

that amidst all the distinctions of time,

"The rank is but the guinea stamp,

The man's the gowd for a' that."

Because he has regarded himself as the high-priest of Nature, and the

world which we inhabit as the abode not merely of human care and human

joys, but as the temple of the living God, in which praise is due, and

where service is to be performed.--"The memory of Scott, Byron, and

Campbell."

WILLIAM E. AYTOUN, Esq., advocate, said--We are met here to-day not only

to pay due honour to the memory of that bard whose genius has

consecrated this spot, and the scenes around it, as classic ground for

ever, but for a wider, a more important, and even a more generous

purpose. I look upon this assemblage as a great national gathering--a

meeting not only of the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland, but of

kindly strangers also, to testify our reverence and affection for the

living lights of fame that are still burning amongst us, and our undying

gratitude and exultation for those who have already passed away. Thus,

though they belong to the sister countries, we have paid due homage to

the venerable name of Wordsworth and to the sparkling genius of Moore.

Thus the heart of every one that hears me burned within him--am I not

right?--when we saw our own noble Wilson rise amidst us, and heard him,

with an eloquence the most pure--for it flowed spontaneously from his

soul--speak, as perhaps no other man could speak, of the genius of the

immortal dead. Thus, too, we have heard the tribute so touchingly paid

to Campbell, who now sleeps among the sages, and the statesmen, and the

warriors, and the poets of famous England; and to him who has a happier

and a holier sepulture still--for he lies within the bosom of his own

dear native land--to Scott, the master-spirit of the age, for whom we

well may mourn, since we dare not hope to look upon his like again! I

have now, in a few words, to entreat your patience whilst I speak of two

other Scottish poets whose memory is yet green amongst us--both reared,

like Robert Burns, at the lowly hearth of the peasant--both pursuing,

like him, through every discouragement and difficulty, the pathway

towards honourable renown--and both the authors of strains which bear

the stamp of immortality. And first, let me allude to one of them whom I

knew and dearly loved. Who is there that has not heard of the Ettrick

Shepherd--of him whose inspiration descended as lightly as the breeze

that blows along the mountain side--who saw, amongst the lonely and

sequestered glens of the south, from eyelids touched with fairy

ointment, such visions as are vouchsafed to the minstrel alone--the

dream of sweet Kilmeny, too spiritual for the taint of earth? I shall

not attempt any comparison--for I am not here to criticise--between his

genius and that of other men, on whom God in his bounty has bestowed the

great and the marvellous gift. The songs and the poetry of the Shepherd

are now the nation's own, as indeed they long have been; and amidst the

minstrelsy of the choir who have made the name of Scotland and her

peasantry familiar throughout the wide reach of the habitable world the

clear wild notes of the Forest will for ever be heard to ring. I have

seen him many times by the banks of his own romantic Yarrow; I have sat

with him in the calm and sunny weather by the margin of Saint Mary's

Lake; I have seen his eyes sparkle and his cheek flush as he spoke out

some old heroic ballad of the days of the Douglas and the Graeme, and I

have felt, as I listened to the accents of his manly voice, that whilst

Scotland could produce amongst her children such men as him beside me,

her ancient spirit had not departed from her, nor the star of her glory

grown pale! For he was a man, indeed, cast in nature's happiest mould.

True-hearted, and brave, and generous, and sincere; alive to every

kindly impulse, and fresh at the core to the last, he lived among his

native hills the blameless life of the shepherd and the poet; and on the

day when he was laid beneath the sod in the lonely kirkyard of Ettrick,

there was not one dry eye amongst the hundreds that lingered round his

grave. Of the other sweet singer, too--of Allan Cunningham, the

leal-hearted and kindly Allan--I might say much; but why should I detain

you further? Does not his name alone recall to your recollection many a

sweet song that has thrilled the bosom of the village maiden with an

emotion that a princess need not blush to own? Honour, then, to the

poets!--whether they speak out loud and trumpet-tongued, to find

audience in the hearts of the great, and the mighty, and the brave--or

whether, in lowlier and more simple accents, but not less sacred in

their mission, they bring comfort and consolation to the poor. As the

sweep of the rainbow, which has its arch in heaven, and its shafts

resting upon the surface of the earth--as the sunshine which falls with

equal bounty upon the palace and the hut--is the all-pervading and

universal spirit of poetry; and what less can we do to those men who

have collected and scattered it around us, than to hail them as the

benefactors of their race? That has been the purpose of our gathering,

and we have held it in a fitting spot. Proud, indeed, may be the

district that can claim within herself the birthplaces of Burns and of

Cunningham; and proud may we all be--and we are proud, from yourself, my

lord, to the humblest individual who bore a part in the proceedings of

this memorable day--that we have the opportunity of testifying our

respect to the genius that will defy the encroachment of time: and which

has shed, and will continue to shed, a splendour and a glory around the

land that we love so well! My lord, I am honoured in having to propose

"The memory of the Ettrick Shepherd, and of Allan Cunningham."

Sir D. H. BLAIR, Bart., of Blairquhan, said--My Lord Eglinton and

gentlemen, I have been requested to give the next toast, which I very

much wish had fallen into abler hands. It is a toast, my lord, that is

as well calculated to call forth enthusiastic bursts of eloquence as any

we have listened to with such delight to-day; but as on that account I

feel quite unable to do it adequate justice, I must trust to that

acclamation by which I am confident it will be received, without any

effort on my part. We all recollect the words of our immortal bard,

when, in alluding to the manner in which nature had finished this fair

creation, he says--

"Her 'prentice han' she tried on man,

And then she made the lasses O!"

I am sure every man in this assembly will join me in an enthusiastic

bumper to the health of the "Countess of Eglinton, and the ladies who

have honoured this meeting with their presence."

Colonel MURE of Caldwell, said--In obedience to the order of our noble

chairman, I have to request a bumper to the Peasantry of Scotland. In

order justly to appreciate the claims of this most estimable class of

our fellow-citizens upon our sympathies, I must remind you that to it

pre-eminently belongs the honour of having given birth to the remarkable

man whose memory we are this day met to celebrate. I must remind you,

that while the fact of Burns having raised himself from the rank of a

Scottish ploughman, by the innate force of heaven-born genius, to the

level of the greatest and most original poets of any age or country, is

the noblest feature of his history, the peasantry of Scotland, in their

turn, may be entitled to feel pride, even in the presence of the

proudest nobles of their land, when they remember that from them, and

not from the privileged orders of society, our greatest national genius

was destined to arise. And, in fact, the most striking, and perhaps the

most valuable feature in the poetical character of Burns, is the marked

ascendancy which the spirit and habits of the peasant, the genius of the

man, as it were, continued to exercise on the genius of the poet, even

during the most brilliant periods of his subsequent career. Even amid

that rich variety of subjects, in the treatment of which his instinctive

refinement and delicacy of taste enabled him to combine, with all the

higher powers of the man, the courtly graces of the gentleman and

scholar--still his happiest effort, the masterpiece of his genius, in

which his own mind is displayed in the most agreeable light, and his

inspiration breathes forth with the greatest brilliancy and beauty, will

be found to be dictated by the associations of his early rustic days.

When I reflect, therefore, how copious, how graphic, how true are his

own descriptions of the character of the Scottish peasantry, in all its

varieties of grave or of gay, of light or of shadow, I cannot but feel

it is a sort of presumption to offer in a company, who must be all so

familiar with these descriptions, any crude remark of my own, on the

more interesting features of those to which they refer. I shall,

however, do my best to season the few comments which I am in some degree

bound to offer on the subject allotted to me, by taking the poet's works

as my text-book. Were I called upon, therefore, to name the virtues of

our peasantry, which chiefly claim our respect and admiration, I should

point first to their industry, frugality, and contentment, as those

which prominently adorn their own class of society above all others, and

also to their piety and their patriotism, as shared, I would fain hope

equally, or at least largely, by the mass of our fellow-citizens. Where,

then, shall we find a more spirited picture of the influence and effects

of the three former qualities--above all, of that most inestimable

blessing, contentment--than in the brilliant little poem which bears the

humble title of the "Twa Dogs," where, after so graphically describing

the honest toils, often the severe hardships, inseparable from the

peasant's lot, he goes on to say, that yet

"They're nae sae wretched's ane wad think,

Though constantly on poortith's brink;

They're sae accustom'd wi' the sight,

The view of it gi'es little fright;

And how it comes I never kent yet,

They're maistly wonderfu' contented;

And buirdly chiels and clever hizzies

Are bred in such a way as this is."

But where are we, after all, to look for the source of this beautiful

attribute of contentment? Is it not in the still more admirable one of

their piety? It is here almost superfluous to make any close appeal to

our poet's authority--to that most sublime description, so familiar to

you all, where the old peasant on the Saturday night collects his

scattered family, at the close of the long week's labour, around his

humble but happy cottage fireside, and, after a few sweet but

hard-earned hours of social enjoyment, instils, before retiring to

repose, from the open Word of God, into their minds those lessons of

Divine wisdom which were to guide them during the next week, and through

life, in the paths of religion and virtue. Are not such scenes to this

day common in our cottages, still, as of old, I firmly believe, the

favourite abodes of the genuine spirit of simple Scottish piety? Then as

to the last, if not the least, in the above list of the virtues of our

peasants--their patriotism. To whom, I would ask, but to the peasantry

of Scotland, does our poet so beautifully appeal as having bled with

Wallace? To whom, but to our peasantry, did our national hero look--and

never look in vain--for support in his gallant effort to restore the

fallen fortunes of his country, at the period when our doughty knights

and nobles--happily but for a season--had been reduced, by the intrigues

or intimidation of our powerful enemy, to crouch submissive beneath the

throne of his usurpation. And can we doubt that this proud spirit of

patriotism still burns as warm in their hearts as then, if no longer, by

God's blessing, so fearfully or so desperately called into action; or

that when after, as our poet again has it,

"They lay aside their private cares

To mind the Kirk and State affairs

They'll talk of patronage and priests

Wi' kindling fury in their breasts,

Or tell what new taxation's coming,

And ferlie at the folks in Lunnan."

But I have already detained you too long--if not longer than the

interest of the subject, at least than my power of doing justice to it

entitles me. I shall therefore conclude by pronouncing a grace over our

bumper, also supplied from the stores of the Poet, and the sentiments of

which every one here present, I am sure, will cordially sympathize--

"O Scotia! my dear, my native soil,

For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent,

Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil

Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content."

Sir JAMES CAMPBELL of Glasgow said--In proposing the toast with which I

have been entrusted, I shall content myself by simply expressing my deep

regret that, under any circumstances, I could so inadequately express my

own sentiments and feelings of admiration--in all the acceptations of

that word--of "the Land of Burns." I am aware, however, that I have the

honour of addressing an assemblage who can appreciate, who do

appreciate, and who, by their appearance here, and the interest so many

of them have taken in the proceedings and associations of this day, give

ample proof of their high estimation of, and attachment to, "the Land of

Burns." I am aware, also, that I have the honour to address not a few of

those who have, with the pencil or with the pen, done homage to the

classical, patriotic, and poetical claims of that land. I feel

satisfied, indeed, that there is not an individual in this most

interesting and splendid assemblage, who does not greatly prize and

admire the fertile soil and landscape beauty of that land; whose bosom

glows not with an honest pride at the intelligence, enterprise, and

patriotism of the men of that land; and, above all, who does not honour

and admire the beauty and accomplishments of the ladies of that land.

And therefore is it, my lord, that, without further preface, I would

call upon this assembly to dedicate a bumper to "The Land of Burns."

Lord EGLINTON said--Ladies and Gentlemen, Except the toast which I have

had the honour and happiness of bringing before you to-day, there is not

one which gives me greater pleasure to see committed to my charge than

that which I am now about to bring before your notice--I mean the

"Provost and Magistrates of Ayr;" and along with it, though not down on

the card, my feelings will not allow me to leave out the Interests of

Ayr. On such an occasion as this, and so late in the day, I will not

occupy your time by dilating on the interest which I feel in that Town,

or of the knowledge which I have of the Provost and the Magistrates.

From that knowledge I feel convinced that the interests of Ayr could not

be placed in more worthy hands. In addition to the respect felt towards

them as the Magistrates of the County Town, we all feel gratitude to

them for the assistance, support, and countenance, they have given to

our proceedings on this occasion.

Provost MILLER said--Permit me to return my best thanks, on behalf of my

colleagues and myself, for the flattering compliment which has just been

paid to them. The manner in which the toast was introduced by the noble

lord was particularly gratifying to me; and I am sure it will be

appreciated by the entire corporation. I beg to assure the noble lord

that the recognition of "Auld Ayr" at a meeting so peculiarly

interesting as the present, and combining, as it does, so much of the

rank, talent, and worth of the land, will be highly appreciated by the

"honest men and bonnie lasses" for which it has been characterized by

the immortal bard in honour of whose memory we are this day met.

The LORD JUSTICE-GENERAL rose amidst much applause. He said--Ladies and

gentlemen, after the uncommon success which has attended every part of

the proceedings at this meeting to-day, I am confident that I anticipate

the unanimous concurrence of this great assembly I have now the honour

to address, when I state that there appears, in addition to many toasts

drunk with so much enthusiasm, one that remains as a debt of gratitude

due by this assembly. I consider it a most fortunate circumstance

attending this meeting, that we have been presided over by the Noble

Lord in the chair. I am sure that the most enthusiastic admirers of

Burns must be gratified in thinking that the proceedings of this day

have been conducted by my noble friend in so admirable a manner. Every

person must be satisfied that it was impossible the proceedings of this

day could have been commenced in a happier strain. Without further

comment, I beg leave to propose that we drink the health of our

excellent Chairman.

Lord EGLINTON, in reply, said--My Lord Justice, and ladies and

gentlemen, I assure you I feel most deeply grateful to you for the

honour you have paid me, as I always ought to be when my health is

proposed and drunk at a meeting of Scotchmen. But I assure you I never

felt more deeply grateful, or more highly sensible of that honour, than

I do at the present moment, when my health is proposed by such a man as

the Lord Justice-General, and when it has been received--and, I am proud

to say, enthusiastically received--by an assemblage met for such a

purpose as to do honour to the memory of our greatest poet. But,

gentlemen, I will not at this late hour of the day, and in a temple, as

it were, dedicated to the Muses--I will not occupy your time by

returning thanks for drinking the health of one who has no merit. But,

before we part, there is a toast which claims our especial

consideration--"the health of Professor Wilson." Had it not been for the

modesty of the Professor, it ought to have been proposed at a much

earlier part of the evening. On such an occasion as this, when we have

met from all parts of Scotland, to do honour to the memory of the

greatest genius Scotland ever knew, it surely is not only proper, but

our bounden duty, to drink the health of the greatest genius which

Scotland possesses now. The memories of others have been drunk to-night,

and have been received with that deep feeling which Scotchmen feel

towards the memory of genius, but the toast which I am now proposing is

one which has this additional merit, that the subject of it is alive and

hearty, and able to continue, as you have heard to-day, in that career

which has hitherto so much delighted his countrymen. In the presence of

Professor Wilson I cannot dilate, as I could wish to do, on the

character of that gentleman. I will only ask you to drink with me his

health in a way that will show that you can pay honour to genius alive,

as you can do honour to departed worth.

Professor WILSON rose and simply bowed his acknowledgments.

The Earl of EGLINTON then rose and said--Ladies and Gentlemen,

"Nae man can tether time nor tide;

The hour approaches--Tam maun ride."

This brought the proceedings to a close.

We have thought it due--not less to the character of the meeting than to

the sincere and fervid eloquence of the speakers--to place upon our

pages an authentic record of the whole proceedings of the day. This

"great national gathering," as it was aptly denominated, must be of

enduring and not ephemeral interest, and will be remembered, and spoken

of, and quoted, long after events of greater apparent importance have

passed away into oblivion. The outpourings of a nation's heart are

immortal. The tributes that were paid, in the ages long since gone by,

to the poets of Greece and of Italy, have outlived the most enduring

monuments of marble, and we dare not hesitate now to recognise a triumph

which will be as everlasting as theirs.

We feel that little comment is necessary upon the various addresses that

are given above. But we should not be justified--and no man who was

there that day would forgive us--if we passed over in silence the manly

and distinguished manner in which Lord Eglinton discharged the duties of

the chair. Scotland, as we have already had occasion to say, is proud,

and justly so, of her aristocracy; but there is not one of them all,

through the whole length and breadth of the land, to whom she can point

more exultingly than to this young nobleman. His opening address would

have done honour to one long trained in the schools of oratory, and that

was its smallest merit. The emphatic and earnest tone of admiration in

which he spoke of the peasantry of his country--his generous and

touching allusions to Burns in his earlier years, to what he had done

and suffered, and to the honours so long withheld, and now so

brilliantly conferred--and the patriotic fervour which pervaded his

whole address--carried along with him not only the applauses, but the

hearts of the whole assemblage. Lord Eglinton may well look back with

pride and satisfaction to the proceedings of that day; for he has

secured the affections of thousands who already respected his name.

Of the other speeches, eloquent and impressive as they were, we

shall--with only one exception--speak collectively; and the highest

praise we can give is to say, that they were every way worthy of the

occasion, of the subjects which they celebrated, and of the men by whom

they were uttered. There was a delicate propriety in the feeling which

excluded from the list of toasts the names of the living poets, with the

great and glorious exceptions of Wordsworth and Moore, now beyond all

cavil at the head of the literature of their respective countries. Their

presence, though ardently hoped for, was hardly to be expected on this

occasion; for their advanced years, and the distant journey they must

have undertaken, were serious obstacles; but their apologetic letters,

full of deep feeling and sympathy, were received, and the reception

which greeted their names, showed the respect and love which the

Scottish people entertain for the greatness and universality of their

fame. Deep also and thrilling was the emotion evinced at the mention of

the illustrious dead, who have passed away into their graves in the

fulness and maturity of their fame. Strange and powerful is the spell

which lies in the mere plain utterance of their names! Scott, and Byron,

and Campbell, (just laid in the noblest mausoleum of the world,) the

Ettrick Shepherd, and Allan Cunningham--what names for a country to

record in its annals, in the brief space of one generation!

But the speech to which all looked forward with the utmost expectation

and anxiety, was that of Professor Wilson. His zeal in the cause of

Burns, his earnest and reiterated defence of his reputation, were so

well known, that on this occasion, when the balance might be held as

finally struck, and when the nation, by its own voluntary act, had

recognized the position which its poet, through all time coming must

maintain, it would have been felt as a vast and serious omission if the

last elegy had not been uttered by the greatest vindicator of his fame.

It _was_ so uttered, and none but those who listened to that address can

conceive the effect which it produced. Elsewhere than in these pages we

should assuredly have attempted some comment upon it. As it is, we shall

borrow an opinion of the provincial press, from the pen, we believe, of

the Editor of the _Dumfries-shire Herald_, Mr Aird, himself a spectator

of the scene, and a man of high intellect and imagination, whose remarks

we have been led to adopt, not from the eulogy they contain, but from

their just and reverential truth:--

"The remarkable speech of the day was Professor Wilson's. Since the time

when in his 'bright and shining youth' he walked seventy miles to be

present at a Burns' meeting, and electrified it with a new and peculiar

fervour of eloquence, such as had never been heard among us before, how

manifold, how multiform have been this man's generous vindications of

our great Bard! Now broad in humour; now sportive and playful; now

sarcastic, scornful, and searching; now calmly philosophic in criticism;

now thoughtful and solemn, large of reverent discourse, 'looking before

and after,' with all the sweetest by-plays of humanity, with every

reconciling softness of charity--such, in turns, and in quickest

intermingled tissue of the ethereal woof, have been the many

illustrations which this large-minded, large-hearted Scotchman, in whose

character there is neither corner nor cranny, has poured in the very

prodigality of his affectionate abundance around and over the name and

the fame of Robert Burns. It became him--and he knew it--that on this

great and consummating occasion, so full of reconcilement betwixt human

frailty and human worth, his address, on which so much expectation

waited, should be a last SOLEMN REQUIEM over the grave of the

illustrious dead, pronounced not merely to the congregation of the day,

but to mankind in general, and to every future age. With those long,

heart-drawn, lingering, slow-expiring tones, solemn as a cathedral

chant, the whole of this sacred piece of service (for we can call it

nothing else) was to us like some mournful oratorio by Mozart, soft at

once and sublime. Some might be disappointed that they heard nothing on

this occasion of the varied play of Christopher North; but the heart of

Scotland, in its calm retirement, will appreciate this holy oration, as

worthily hallowing and sanctifying her meeting."

The proceedings in that Pavilion were a just and fitting conclusion to

the splendid jubilee of the day. Some no doubt were absent, whom the

public would gladly have seen there; for, on an occasion like this, the

general wish must have been, that all the greatness, and talent, and

learning of the land should have united in the National Festival. But

that absence, though regretted, did not, in any degree, lessen the

enthusiasm. Indeed, as we looked around the meeting, and saw, unelevated

to any conspicuous place, Delta, and Chambers, and Ferrier, and a

hundred other distinguished men, not only content, but proud to bear

testimony by their simple presence to the genuine purpose of the

assembly, it was hardly possible to wish for more. Every individual

feeling was merged in the common desire, that the day should be

consecrated to its own peculiar object; and consecrated it was, if

unanimity, and eloquence, and tears, and the outpouring of all that is

lofty, and generous, and sincere, can consecrate aught on earth--where

error and frailty must abide, but where the judgment of man in his

weakness, may not, and dare not, usurp the functions of the All-seeing

and Eternal Judge.

And now we close the hasty record of a scene that will be remembered so

long as Scotland is a nation. Some there may be--for there are malignant

and jaundiced spirits every where--who may sneer at the solemnities we

have witnessed; and it is well that they should do so, for the praise of

such men is no honour--far better that it should be withheld. We

conclude by again adopting the language of Mr Aird, which leaves no word

unsaid.

"Such has been the tribute of a country to her national poet. She

furnished him with the rich materials of his song--with her dear

victories set in blood; with the imperishable memory of her

independence; with the character of her sons and daughters, simple as

water, but strong as the waterfall; with her snatches of old-world

minstrelsy, surely never composed by mortal man, but spilt from the

overflowing soul of sorrow and gladness; with her music, twin-born, say

rather one with her minstrelsy; with her fairy belief, the most

delicately beautiful mythology in the history of the human mind, and

strangely contrasted with the rugged character of her people, a people

of sturt and strife; with her heroic faith; with the graves of her

headless martyrs, in green shaw or on grim moor, visited by many a slip

of sunshine streaming down from behind the cloud in the still autumnal

afternoon. These, and all the other priceless elements of 'the auld

Scottish glory,' he--the national bard--compacted and crystallized into

a Poetry which, by innumerable points of sympathetic contact, carries

back into the national heart, by ever-conducting issue, the thoughts and

feelings which itself first gave forth to his plastic genius; and thus

there is an eternal interchange of cause and effect, to the perpetuation

and propagation of patriotism, and all that constitutes national spirit

and character.

"THEREFORE it was fitting that such a national tribute should be paid to

such a national benefactor."