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Cornell University Library 
 PR 4335.S74 1904 
 
 Speeches and essays by John Wilson, Rev. 
 
 ;^ 1924 013 447 895 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tinis book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013447895 
 
SPEECHES AND ESSAYS 
 
 Pbof. JOHN WILSOiT, Bev. Dk. WALLACp, 
 
 Gen. JAS. A. G-ARPIELD, Hon. S. S. COX, 
 
 Hon. W. P. FKYE, ' Hon.. j; PBOOTOR KNOTT, 
 
 : Mb. 'AIfpKE\V CARNEGIE, ' , 
 LoED ROSEBERY, . Hon. E. R. HOAR, 
 
 . RALPH WALDO EMERSON, 
 
 Hon. GEO. F. HOAR, U. S. Senatb, - W.R.SMITH, 
 Hon; DAVIETb. HENDERSON, Speakee, Hopse • 
 OF Kepeesbntatives, ' . ~ 
 
 _Db. MacLeod, 
 
 WITH , 
 
 Poems on Burns, 
 
 MONTGOMERY, HALLECK and CAMPBELL, 
 
 MbS. WM. R. SMITH, ANP OTHEES. 
 
 SPECIAL EDUION FOR THE BURNS COTTAQE ASSOCIATION. 
 
 JOHN W. DICK, 
 ROBERT JOHNSTON, 
 WM. H. THOMPSON, 
 JOSEPH A. GRAHAM, 
 SEORGE S. JOHNS, 
 
 Officers : 
 
 . Preaiaenf 
 Vlce^Presiaent 
 Treasurer ■ 
 Secretary': 
 Cor. Secretary 
 
 \ 
 
 WASHINGTON, D. O. 
 GIBSON BBOTHEES, PBINTEES, 
 
 : 1904. 
 
ROBERT BURNS. 
 From an etchirtg by Nicholson after Nasmyih, 1819. 
 
SPEECHES AND ESSAYS 
 
 Peop. JOHN AVILSON, Eet. De. WALLA.OK, 
 
 Gen. JAS. A. GARFIELD, Hon. S. S. COX, 
 
 Hon. W. p. FKYE, Hon. J. PKOOTOB KNOTT, 
 
 Mb. ANDREW CARNEGIE, 
 
 LoED EOSEBEEY, Hon. E. R. HOAR, 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON, 
 
 Hon. GEO. P. HOAR, U. S. Senate, W. E. SMITH, 
 
 Hon. DAVID B. HENDERSON, Speakeb, House 
 
 of Repbesentatives, 
 
 De. MaoLEOD, 
 
 WITH 
 
 Poems on Burns, 
 
 MONTGOMERY, HALLECK and CAMPBELL, 
 Mrs. WM. E. SMITH, and othebs. 
 
 SPECIAL EDITION FOR THE BURNS COHAOE ASSOCIATION. 
 
 JOHN W. DICK, 
 BOBERT JOHNSTON, 
 WM. H. THOMPSON, 
 JOSEPH A. GRAHAM, 
 GEORGE S. JOHNS, 
 
 Officers : 
 
 . President 
 
 Vice-President 
 
 Treasurer 
 
 Secretary 
 
 Cor. Secretary 
 
 WASHINGTON, D. O. 
 
 GIBSON BBOTHEBS, FBINTEBS, 
 
 1904. 
 
This booklet is published for the purpose of helping people to 
 think aright about Robert Burns. 
 
 At a meeting of the Burns Club of Washington, April lo, 1876, a 
 committee was directed to publish in book form, as a contribution to Burns 
 literature, the speech of John Wilson, delivered to 70,000 people congregated 
 on the banks of the Doon, on the return of Burns' son from India, in 1844, 
 which had never been published in this country; the great oration of Dr. 
 Wallace, delivered in Edinburgh, on Burns' birth-day, 1872 ; together with 
 the speeches delivered and letters read before the Club on various anniversary 
 occasions by the following distinguished statesmen and orators : Gen. Jas. A. 
 Garfield, Hon. J. G. Blaine, Prof. James Monroe, Hon, S. S. Cox, Hon. 
 W. P. Frye, Hon. J. Proctor Knott, and others. 
 
 In this Second Edition we add the essay of Mr. Andrew Carnegie, the 
 speeches of Lord Rosebery, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Hon, George F, Hoar, 
 Wm. R. Smith, Hon. David B. Henderson, and Dr. MacLeod, and letter of 
 Hon. E. R. Hoar, and sundry interesting poems. 
 
 The names of the above well-known orators, statesmen, and essayists are a 
 sufficient guarantee that the contents of this little volume will make an excellent 
 addenda to every edition of the poet's works. 
 
 The keen analysis of J. Proctor KNOTT,^the natural eloquence of W. P. 
 Frye, the witticisms ofS.S. Cox, the scholarly parallels of Jas. A. Garfibi d 
 and the remarks of other distinguished gentlemen who have spoken for Burns 
 at the National Capital, are worthy of America. The progressive religious 
 thought in the oration of the Rev. Dr. Wallace is inimitable in its way, and 
 well worthy a place in connection with the masterly speech of glorious old 
 Christopher North. 
 
 As a prelude we give the poem of James Montgomery : 
 ROBERT BURNS. 
 
 What bird in beauty, flight, or song, 
 (Jan with the bard compare. 
 
 Who sang as sweet, and soar'd as 
 strong 
 As ever child of air ? 
 
 His plume, his note, his form, could 
 Burns 
 
 For whim or pleasure change : 
 He was not one, but all by turns, 
 
 With transmigration strange. 
 
 The Blackbird, oracle of spring, 
 When flower'd his moral lay ; 
 
 The Swallow, wheeling on the wing, 
 Capriciously at play. 
 
 The Humming-bird, from bloom to 
 bloom, 
 
 Inhaling heavenly balm ; 
 The Raven, in the tempest's gloom ; 
 
 The Halcyon in the calm. 
 
 In " auld Kirk AJloway," the Owl, 
 At witching time o t night ; 
 
 By " bonnie Doon," the earliest Fowl 
 That carroU'd-tc the light. 
 
 He was the Wren amidst the grove. 
 When in his homely vein ; 
 
 At Bannockburn the Bird of Jove, 
 
 With thunder in his train. 
 
 The Woodlark, in his mournful hours ; 
 
 The Goldiinch, in his mirth ; 
 The Thrush, a spendthrift of his 
 power, 
 
 Enrapturing heaven and earth. 
 
 The Swan, in majesty and grace, 
 
 Contemplative and still ; 
 But roused, — no Falcon, in the chase. 
 
 Could like his satire kill. 
 
 The Linnet in simplicity. 
 
 In tenderness the Dove ; 
 But more than all besides was he. 
 
 The Nightingale in love. 
 
 Oh ! had he never stooped to shame. 
 
 Nor lent a charm to vice. 
 How had devotion loved to name 
 
 That Bird of Paradise ! 
 
 Peace to the dead !— In Scotia's choir 
 Of Minstrels great and small, 
 
 He sprang from his spontaneous fire. 
 The Phoenix of them aH. 
 
speeches on J)urns. 
 
 A GRAND demonstration in honor of the genius of 
 HoBERT Burns was suggested to the people of Soot- 
 land by the arrival from India of Col. William Burns, 
 the poet's second son. August 6, 184;4, was selected 
 as a national holiday in Scotland. The great festival 
 was presided over by the Earl of Eglinton, supported 
 by hundreds of the nobility and men of letters, whose 
 names filled columns of the public journalsof that time. 
 We select from the able speeches made on the occasion 
 that of Prof. John Wilson, of Blackwood's Magazme : 
 
 Were this festival to commemorate the genius of Burns, 
 and it were asked what need is there of such commemoration, 
 since his fame is co-extensive with the literature of our land, 
 and inherent in every soul, I would answer that though ad- 
 miration of the poet be indeed unbounded as the world, yet 
 we, as compatriots to whom it is more especially dear, rejoice to 
 see that universal sentiment concentrated in the voice of a 
 great assembly of his own people — that we rejoice to meet in. 
 thousands to honor him who has delighted each single one of 
 us all at his own hearth. But this commemoration expresses, 
 too, if not a profounder, yet a more tender sentiment ; for it 
 is to welcome his sons to the land which their father illus- 
 trated — to indulge our national pride in a great name, while, 
 at the same time, we gratify in full breasts the most pious of 
 affections. It was customary, you know, in former times, to 
 crown great poets. Jfo such oblation honored our bard ; yet 
 he, too, tasted of human applause — he enjoyed its delights, 
 and he knew the trials that attend it. Which, think you, 
 would he have preferred ? Such a celebration as this in his 
 lifetime, or fifty years after his death ? I cannot doubt that 
 he would have preferred the posthumous, because the finer 
 incense. The honor and its object are thus seen in their just 
 proportions ; for death gives an elevation which the candid 
 soul of the poet would have considered, and that honor he, 
 would have reserved rather for his manes than encountered it 
 
■with his living infirmities. And yet, could he have foreseen 
 the day when they for whom his soul was often sorely troubled, 
 should, after many years of separation, return to the cot where 
 himself was born, and near it, within the shadow of his own 
 monument, be welcomed for his sake by the lords and ladies 
 of the land — and dearer still, far dearer to his manly breast, by 
 the children and the children's children of people of his own 
 degree, whose hearts he souxht to thrill by the voice of hia 
 own inspirations — then surely would such a vision have been 
 sweeter to his soul even than that immortal one in which the 
 genius of the land bound holly round his forehead — the lyric- 
 wreathed crown that shall flourish forever. Of his three son» 
 now sitting here, one only, I believe, can remember his father's- 
 face— can remember those large, lustrous eyes of his, so full 
 of meaning, whether darkened by thought, melting in melan- 
 choly, or kindling in mirth— but never turned on his children, 
 nor the mother of his children, but with one expression of 
 tenderest, most intense affection. Even at this day, he, too, 
 may remember his father's head with its dark clusters, not 
 unmixed with gray, and those eyes closed forever, lying upon 
 the bed of death ; nor, should such solemn image arise, would 
 it be unsuitable to this festival ; for while I bid welcome to 
 the sons of Burns to their father's land, I feel, I cannot hnt 
 feel, that while you have conferred upon me u high honor, 
 you have also imposed upon me a sacred duty ; and however 
 inadequately I may discharge it, at least I shall in no degree 
 violate either the spirit of humanity or truth. In speaking of 
 the character of Burns, in the presence of his sons, I must 
 speak reverently ; but even in their presence I must not refuse 
 to speak the truth. I must speak according to the established 
 and everlasting judgment of what is right. Burns had his 
 faults. Burns, like every other mortal being, had his faults, 
 great faults in the eyes of men, and grievous in the eyes of 
 heaven above. There is a moral in every man's life, even in 
 his humblest condition, imperfectly understood ; and how 
 affecting is it when we read confessions wrung out by remorse 
 from the souls of the greatly gifted and the gloriously en- 
 dowed. But it is not his faults that are remembered here — 
 surely it is not to honor these that here we meet together. To 
 deny that error is error is to extenuate its blame. We mike 
 au outrage upon sacred truth ; but to forget that it exists, or if 
 that may not be wholly, so to think of it as to regard it with 
 that melancholy emotion that accompanies all our medita- 
 tions on the mixed character of men, that is not only allow- 
 able, but it is ordered — it is a privilege dear to humanity. 
 And well indeed might we tremble for him who should in 
 this be dead to the voice of Nature crying from the tomb. 
 And in this mark how graciously time aids the inclinations of 
 charity. Its shadows soften what they may not hide ; and the 
 distant discords that might have grated too painfully on our 
 
ears are now undistingnishably lost in that music, sweet and 
 solemn, that comes afar with the sound of a great man's name. 
 It is consolatory to see how the faults of those whom the peo- 
 ple honor grow fainter and more faint in the national memory, 
 while their virtues grow brighter and still more bright ; and if 
 in this injustice has been done them — and who shall dare to 
 deny that eruelest injustice was once done to Burns — the suc- 
 ceeding generations become more and more charitable to the 
 dead, and desire to repair the wrong by some profounder hom- 
 age. It may be truly said " the good which men do lives after 
 them." All that is ethereal in their being alone seems to sur- 
 vive ; and, therefore, all our cherished memories of- our best 
 men, and Burns was among our best, ought to be invested with 
 all consistent excellencies ; for far better do their virtues in- 
 struct us by the love which they inspire than ever could their 
 vices admonish us. To dwell on the goodness of the great 
 shows that we ourselves are not only lovers of nature, but that 
 we may be aspiring to reach his serene abode ; but to dwell 
 upon the faults of greatness, and, still worse, to ransack, in 
 order that we may create them, that is the low industry of 
 envy, which grown into a habit, becomes malice, at once hard- 
 ening and embittering to the mind. Such, in the case of our 
 great poet, beyond all doubt was the source of many a malig- 
 nant truth and lie, fondly written down, carefully recorded, by 
 a class of calumniators that never may become extinct. And for 
 many years we were forced to hear souls ignoble, formed to be 
 forgot, dragging forth some puny phantasm of their own 
 heated fancy, as if it were the mu jestic shade of Burns, evoked 
 from his mausoleum for contumely and insult. We have thus 
 been told, by some who rather presumptuously assume the 
 office of our instructors, to beware how we allow our admira- 
 tion of genius to seduce us from reverence of truth. We have 
 been told how far moral is superior to intellectual worth ; nay, 
 that in nature they are not allied. But akin in nature they are, 
 and grief and pity 'tis that they should ever be disunited. But 
 mark in what a hateful, because hypocritical, spirit such conn- 
 eels as these have often been preferred, till salutary truths 
 have been perverted by gross misrepresentation into pernicious 
 falsehoods. They did not seek to elevate nature ; they sought 
 to degrade genius. And never in any instance did such men 
 stand forth so glaringly self-contradicted of wretched igno- 
 rance of the nature of both than by this wilful perversion of 
 many of the noblest attributes of humanity in the character of 
 Hobert Burns. Yes ; virtue and genius are both alike from 
 heaven, and both alike tend heavenward. Therefore we 
 lament to see a single stain assailing the divine gift of genius — 
 therefore lament to see virtue, where no genius is, fall before 
 the tempter. But let us never listen to those who, by the very 
 breath of morning, would seek to blight the wreath bound 
 
6 
 
 round the forehead of the Muse's son by a people's gratitude. 
 Let us beware of those who, under affected zeal for religion, 
 have as often violated the spirit of both by gross misrepresen- 
 tations and exaggerations and denunciations of the common 
 frailties of our nature in illustrious men — in men who, in spite 
 of their aberrations, more or less deplorable, from the right 
 line of duty, were, nevertheless, like Burns, in their prevailing 
 moods, devoted worshippers of virtue in the general tenor of 
 their lives, and noble examples to all of their brethren. Burns, 
 who, while sorely oppressed in his own generous breast by 
 the worst of anxieties — the anxiety of providing the means 
 of subsistence to those of his own household and his own 
 heart — was notwithstanding no less faithful to that sacred gift 
 with which by heaven he had been endowed. Obedient to the 
 holy inspiration, he ever sought it purely in the paths of pov- 
 erty — to love which is indeed from heaven. From his inexhaus- 
 tible fancy, warmed by the sunshine of his heart, even in the 
 thickest gloom, he strewed along the weary ways of the world 
 flowers so beautiful that even to eyes that weep — that are 
 familiar with tears — they look as if they were flowers dropped 
 from heaven. But in a more humane — in a more Christian — 
 spirit, have men now consented to judge of the character of 
 their great benefactor; therefore at an hazard I may call 
 them sacred scenes, the anniversary of the birth or death of 
 one who had completed so great an achievement. But they 
 have still sought to make manifest the honor they intended 
 him — to make manifest, if possible, in some degree the de- 
 mands made upon- them -by the imagination and 'the heart. 
 In what other way than that could genius ever have dared 
 to seek to perpetuate in elegies and hymns expressive of a 
 -whole people's triumph, and a whole people's grief, for the 
 death of some king, sage, priest, or poet ? What king from 
 the inflrmities of his meanest subjects ever was free? We 
 know (hat throbs come from a kingly heart up to the brow 
 which is rounded by a kingly crown. Aye, kings have pas- 
 sions or ideas as fatal as those that torment the heart of 
 the meanest kind on his pallet of straw. But then the 
 king, with all his sins, had been u guardian, a restorer, a de- 
 liverer ; thus his sins were buried with his body, and all over 
 the land — not only in his day, but in after generations — the 
 cry was " O king, live forever ! " The sage has seen how 
 liberty rests on law; how rights are obligations; how the 
 passions of men must be controlled in order that they may be 
 free. He, too, how often has he struggled in vain with hia 
 own passions ; with the powers of evil that beset him in that 
 seclusion- in. which .reverend admiration would fondlybelieve 
 that wisdom forever serenely dwells ? The servant of God, 
 has he always kept his heart pure from the earth, nor ever 
 lifted up in prayer but spotless hands ? The humbled confes- 
 sion of his own uuworthiness would be his reply, alike to the 
 
scoffer and to him that believed. But were there one afflicted 
 by plague or pestilence, he had carried comfort into the house 
 deserted by all, except by sin and despair — or he sailed away 
 from the homes of Christian men, where he had lived long in 
 peace, honor, and affluence, for the sake of his divine Master, 
 and for the sake of them who were sitting in darkness and the 
 shadow of death; therefore shall his name be blessed, and all 
 Christendom point to him as a chosen servant of God. Now, 
 it might seem that there is a deep descent from these bene- 
 factors of our race to those who have done other services to 
 mankind by their powers of fancy and imagination, and by 
 means of the created powers of God. It might so seem ; but 
 they, too, have been numbered among our best benefactors. 
 Their graves have been visited by many a pious pilgrim from 
 afar ; and whether we think on the highest of them all, Milton, 
 who sung things yet unattempted in prose or rhyme, and yet 
 who was not free from the errors inseparable from the storms 
 of civil war which then raged, even to the shedding of the 
 blood of kings — down to England's beloved ilhistrious min- 
 strel — Wordsworth — descending from height to height in the 
 regions of song — we fiud that our love and gratitude is due to 
 them as benefactors of our species. And among such bene- 
 factors who will deny that Burns is entitled to a place — who 
 reconciled poverty to its lot, who lightened the burden of care, 
 made toil charmed with its very task-work, and at the same 
 time almost reconciled grief to the grave; who by one im- 
 mortal song has sanctified forever the poor man's cot, and by 
 ■ a picture'which genius alone, inspired by piety, could have 
 conceived, a picture so tender and yet so true of that happy 
 night, that it seems to pass, by some sweet transition, from 
 the working world into that hallowed day of God's appoint- 
 ment and made to breathe a heavenly calm— a holy serenity? 
 Now, I hold that such sentiments as these which I have ex- 
 pressed, if they be true, afford a justification at once of the 
 character of Burns — his moral and intellectual character — that 
 places him beyond the possibility of detraction, among the 
 highest order of human beings who have benefited their race 
 by the expressions of noble sentiment and glorious thoughts. 
 I fear I am trespassing on your time too much, but I would 
 fain keep your attention for a very short time longer, while I 
 say that there is a voice heard above and below and round 
 about — the voice of mere admiration, as it has been expressed 
 by men of taste and criticism. There is a voice which those who 
 listen to it can hear — a voice which has pronounced its judg- 
 ment on the character of Barns — a judgment which cannot on 
 earth be carried to a higher tribunal, and which never will be 
 reversed. It was heatdof old, and struck terror into the 
 hearts of tyrants, who quaked and quailed and fled for fear 
 from this Und before the unconquered Caledonian spear. It 
 is a voice they were pleased to hear ; it was like the sound of 
 
8 
 
 distant waterfalls, the murmurs of the summer woods, or the 
 voice of the mighty sea which ever rolls even on. I mean the 
 voice of the people of Scotland, of her peasantry and trade?, 
 of all who earn their bread by the sweat of their brow ; the 
 voice of the working men. I shall not pretend to draw their 
 character ; this I may say of them now, and boldly, that they 
 do not choose to be dictated to as to the choice of those who 
 with them shall be a household word. They are men from 
 whose hands easier would it be to wrench the weapon than 
 ever to wrench their worship from their hearts. They are men 
 who loved truth, sincerity, integrity, resolution, and inde- 
 pendence — an open front, and a bold eye, that fears not to 
 look.on the face of clay. They do not demand, in one and 
 the same person, inconsistent virtues; they are no lovers of 
 perfection or of perfectibility ; they know that there are 
 fainter and darker shadows in the character of every man ; and 
 they seem, as we look back on their history, to have loved 
 most those who have been subject most within and without to 
 strong and severe temptation. Whether in triumph or in 
 valor, they have shown at least, by the complexion of charac- 
 ter of their souls, that they loved their country, and bad no 
 other passion so strong as the defence of the people. Aye I 
 they too, unless I am mistaken, loved those who had struggled 
 with adversity. They loved those who have had their trials, 
 their griefs, their sorrows; and, most of all, they loved those 
 who were not ashamed of confessing that they were so,' and 
 who threw themselves on the common feelings and forgiveness 
 here below, and trusted for forgiveness on other principles 
 and feelings altogether to- that source from which alone it can 
 come. The love of the people of Scotland for those whom 
 they haye loved has not been exclusive— it has been compre- 
 hensive. They left the appearance of their different charac- 
 ters, and honored them for every advance they made, provided 
 they saw the strength of character, moral and intellectual. 
 Such a people as this, possessing such feelings, could not but 
 look upon Bobert Burns, and while they admired him they 
 also loved him with the truest affection, as well for the virtues 
 as for the sorrows and the griefs of that great, but in some 
 respects unfortunate, man. Was he worthy of their love ? 
 Taking it for granted, and we are entitled to do so — then why, 
 did they love him ? They loved him because he loved his own 
 order, nor ever desired, for a single hour, to quit it. They 
 loved him because he loved the very humblest condition of 
 humanity so much, that by his connection he saw more truly 
 and became more distinctly acquainted with what was truly 
 good, and imbued with a spirit of love in the soul of a man. 
 They loved him for that which he had sometimes been most 
 a' surdly questioned for — his independence. They loved him 
 for bringing sunshine into dark places; not for representing 
 the poor hard-working man as an object of pity — but for show- 
 
iDg that there was something more than is dreamed of in the 
 world's philosophy among the tillers of the soil and the hum- 
 blest children of the land. From such a character as that 
 which I have truly given Scotland's people, one would expect 
 that all their poetry would be of a stern or furious kind, the 
 poetry only of bloodshed and destruction ; but it was not so, 
 nor is it so, but with some glorious exceptions in the poetry of 
 Burns. For how did the men of old love poetry, and was it 
 loved in the huts where they were born ? Yes. Poetry was 
 the produce both of the heathery mountains and the broomy 
 braes. In the days of old they had their music plaintive and 
 dirge like, as it sighed for the absent or wailed for the dead. 
 These fragments, while they were fluttering about in disorder 
 and decay, were seized upon by him, the sweetest lyrist of 
 them all, and sometimes, by the change of a single word, he let 
 in the soul of beauty — sometimes by a few happy touches of 
 his genius be changed the fragment into a whole so exquisitely 
 moulded that no one could tell which were the lines belonging 
 to Burns and which to the poet of ancient days. But all of 
 them now belong to Burns, for he has rescued them from ob- 
 livion. He also took the music, and set the unlettered lan- 
 guage of nature to every necessary modulation of human 
 speech, so that the poetry of Burns is as popular and as na- 
 tional as his music. 
 
 EoBEKT Bdens, son of the poet, in reply, said : 
 
 I am sure the sons of Burns feel all that they ought on an 
 occasion so gratifying, on which so nobly generous a welcome 
 has been given them to the banks of Doou. Wherever they 
 have gone they have found a reception prepared for them by 
 the genius and fame of their father, and under the providence 
 of 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 sous of Burns have grateful hearts, and will remember, 
 so long as they live, the honor which has this day been con- 
 ferred 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 respect- 
 able company for the honor which has been done us this day. 
 
10 
 
 At the Birthday Celebration in Edinburgh, January 
 25, 1872, Dr. Wallace spoke " To the memory of 
 Burns," as follows : 
 
 Some people think that a demoDstration like the present, to 
 commemorate the work done by Kobert Burns, not only for 
 Scotland, but for mankind, is a proceeding that ought not to 
 take plioe, and that cannot be defended. "We are charged 
 with practising the idolatry of genius. That, I believe, is the 
 usual phrase. I am not sure that I exactly understand its 
 meaning. In its literal interpretation it is nonsensical. Idol- 
 atry means religious adoration presented in a certain supersti- 
 tious form ; and it need scarcely be said that the better one 
 understands and sympathizes with the ideas and spirit of 
 Burns, the less will he be inclined to regard any creature, 
 human or otherwise, with sentiments of that description. Ac- 
 cordingly, I presume, that this idolatry of genius must be a 
 figurative mode of denoting the admiration of intellectual 
 power, apart from its moral character, in spite of disastrous 
 influences exerted by it on the happiness or highest well-being 
 of mankind. That the genius of Burns was S[ilendid enough 
 to excite this undiscriminating admiration in minds incapable 
 of discrimination is not to be doubted ; but had he really pro- 
 faned his great and sacred gifts, and made himself a pow.er for 
 evil, I trust that none of us would have been here to do honor 
 to his memory. Bu£ if his genius was a beneficent as well as a 
 brilliant force in history, then it was a force upon so great a 
 scale, of so exquisite a quality, and dealing so searchingly with 
 subjects of the deepest human interest, that the good it 
 wrought, necessarily corresponding in its magnitude, must 
 evoke some expression of grateful admiration from all whose 
 sensibilities qualify them for its proper recognition. It is the 
 fact that the genius of Burns dealt fearlessly with the most 
 awful questions of human destiny ; investigated with original 
 inquiry the meaning and the true aim and method of life ; 
 tasted every experience of mirthful, sad, and tender emotion ; 
 and gave out its impressions and conclusions in a wealth of 
 thought, a beauty of form, and a memorableness of phrase that 
 have proved an irresistible charm ; and if, as I most certainly 
 believe, this charm was on the side of good, I am not going to 
 be such a stock or stone, or such a worse than senseless thing, 
 as to make no sign of appreciation ; and I will not submit to 
 the insult of being called an idolater, a worshipper of mero 
 power, because in the customary symbol^ of rejoicing I seek to 
 signify my gratitude for almost the greatest Messing the human 
 race ciu receive from, its Maker — a great pqet^who is faithful 
 to his vocation, a master-spirit who has known how to give 
 truth and sympathy a universal and enduring hold over the 
 hearts of men by interweaving them with the graces of immor- 
 tal song. We thank heaven, and rightly, for our very meat and 
 drink — are we to be dumb over a gift like Burns ? 
 
11 
 
 Let me take up that aspect of the subject which a person of 
 my profession naturally regards with most interest and in. 
 which he feels moit at home — the religious and moral influence 
 of Burns. Was that a good, as it was inevitably a powerful in- 
 fluence ? No man should be here who has doubts upon this 
 poiat,for if Barns was a power for evil in religion and moral- 
 ity, nothing els^ that he said or did could atone for thi? dam- 
 ning offence. But he needs no apo'ogy. With all respect to 
 various religious persons who think otherwise, I affirm my 
 conviction that the literary influence of Burns on the spirit of 
 religion is as valuable as it is great. Like every great poet, 
 Bums was a preacher, and in his highest inspirations spoke to 
 the soul. He was not a conventional preacher certainly. He 
 laid about him in a style that would not have commended him. 
 to many Presbyteries of the Bounds. Old women of all kinds, 
 and people of that common and coarse zeal which is oolor-ljlinA 
 to wit, humor, and the idea of art, naturally regard his uncere- 
 monious handling of their favorites as utter profanity. But- 
 to those who are able to place themselves at his point of view, 
 and really understand him, a spirit of lofty, if often severe and 
 indignant, religiousness breathes through the collective poetry 
 whose publication he himself sanctioned, and which alone can 
 be fairly taken as representing his true mind. He has pon- 
 dered deeply the mystery of life and of death ; he has recog- 
 nized a presiding order in the world, which he identifies with 
 a living love ; he has persuaded himself that justice and. judg- 
 ment are the habitation of His throne ; in the fiiith of this he 
 accepts his l)t without complaint, congratulates himself oa 
 its compensations, awaits with confidence the coming of a better 
 day, if not here, then in that sphere of immortal being to the 
 hope of which he unswervingly clings, and consoles himself 
 amidst the uninstructed or hasty condemnation of society by 
 an appeal to the impartial judgment of Omniscience ; he ac- 
 knowledges the imperativeness of duty; and while refusing 
 most properly to humble himself in matters of error before 
 other men, without taking their respective natures and c'rcum- 
 stances into account, yet before the eye of the Eternal Holiness 
 he admits his own responsibility for his own evil with penitent 
 humility — 
 
 " Where with inteution I have erred, 
 Ko oth»r plea I have 
 But Thou art good : and goodness still 
 Delighteth to forgive." 
 
 There are three species of fools that receive no encourage- 
 ment, but much reproof, from the genuine and ichsractemtic 
 teaching of Burns — the fool that hath said in his heart there is. 
 no God, the fool that makes a mock at sin, and the fool that 
 refuses to say " Thy will be done." These are really the great 
 practical questions of all religion, and the man is either uupar- 
 
12 
 
 donably unjust, or unnoticeably stupid, who will insinuate that 
 these questions are treated by Burns otherwise than with the 
 reverence that befits their import, and with an intensity of 
 feeling and aptness of language that will outlive far-off genera- 
 tions of professional preachers. Surely it is no small contri- 
 bution to the influence of religion to have engraved on the 
 iiearts of a whole people such words as these : 
 
 " The great Creator to revere 
 
 Must sure become the creature, 
 But still the preaching cant forbear, 
 
 And e'en the rigid feature ; 
 Tet ne'er with wits profane to range, 
 
 Be complaisance extended ; 
 An Atheist-laugh's a poor exchange 
 
 For Deity offended. 
 "When ranting round in pleasure's ring 
 
 Bellgion may be blinded ; 
 Or if she gi'e a random sting, 
 
 It may be little minded ; 
 But when on life we're tempest-drlTen, 
 
 A conscience but a canker, 
 A correspondence fix'd wl' heaven 
 
 Is sure a noble anchor." 
 
 Or to have given currency to such a philosophy of life as this 
 
 " Then let us cheerfu* acquiesce, 
 Nor make our scanty pleasures less 
 
 By pining at our state ; 
 And even should misfortunes come, 
 I here wha sit ha'e met wi' some, 
 
 An's thanfefu' for them yet ; 
 They gi'e the wit o' age to youth. 
 
 They let us ken oursel'. 
 They make us see the naked truth, 
 The real guid and 111. 
 Tho' losses and crosses be lessons right severe, 
 There's wit there ye'U get there ye'll find nae other where.'' 
 
 Or to have popularized such an example of the true method of 
 fighting with our own evil as this : 
 
 *' Fain would I say * Forgive my foul offence,' 
 
 Fain promise never more to disobey : 
 But, should my Author health again dispense, 
 
 Again I might desert fair Virtue's way — 
 Again in Folly's path might go astray — 
 
 Agiiia exalt the brute and sink the man. 
 Then how should I for Heavenly mercy pray. 
 
 Who act so counter Heavenly mercy's plan ? 
 Who sin so oft have mourned, yet to temptation ran ? 
 
 O Thou, Great Governor of all below, 
 If I may dare a lifted eye to Thee, 
 
 Thy nod can make the tempest cease to blow. 
 Or still the tumult of the raging sea ; 
 
 With that controlling power assist even me 
 Those headlong furious plosions to confine— 
 
 For all unfit I feel my powers to be 
 To rule their torrent in th' allowed line — 
 
 O, aid me with thy help. Omnipotence Divine.*' 
 
 The man who drives from his sympathy and love a nature 
 irom whose inmost being such utterances come stamped with 
 
13 
 
 the impress of living sincerity, and who says to him, " Stand 
 by ! for I am holier than thou," has learned his Christianity in 
 a school where I, for one, desire to take no lessons. 
 
 But it is said Burns was unsound; his creed was very scanty. 
 Certainly his creed did not contain anything like thirty-nine- 
 articles, and I cannot say that what he had was orthodox ac- 
 cording to the standard of Westminster. He was a latitudina- 
 rian ; he was a heretic ; he had no particular reverence for the 
 artificialities of eeclesiastieism. But surely the day is past for 
 measuring the influence of men upon the religious spirit of 
 their time by the particular side which they espouse in the 
 many-angled duel of polemical divinity. We are accustomed 
 now to believe that a good man will do good, whatever the- 
 ology he work with ; that we may take in influences of piety 
 even from the devoutness of heathenism, and receive stimulus 
 in duty from contemplating 
 
 . . . " The moral works 
 Of black GentooB and pagan TurkB." 
 
 We regard simply with amusement the remarkable persoa 
 who looks upon all the world as the enemies of God, excepting 
 himself and the members of his own little persuasion. But in. 
 Burns' day this idea had to be done battle for. Burns had to 
 fight with people who maintained that a man's orthodoxy, or 
 the reverse, formed an essential element in his salvation or per- 
 dition. He certainly never scrupled to maintain the contrary. 
 He declares continually that the judgment to be passed on any 
 individual before God and man turns not upon his opinions, 
 but his character ; not upon his faith, but his faithfulness ; not 
 upon the Tightness or wrongness of his metaphysics, but upon 
 the goodness or badness of his spirit. That we are able, in 
 this country, to affirm and act upon this idea without much 
 fear of annoyance, we owe, in no small degree, to the clear- 
 sightedness of Burns' intellect, the healthiness of his moral in- 
 stincts, and the courage with which he asserted his conviction, 
 amidst a community in which the necessary connection be- 
 tween soundness and safety was more rigidly insisted on than 
 anywhere else in Protestant Christendom. 
 
 In the light of this idea, we are entitled to put out of ac- 
 count Burns' special theological opinions in estimating his in- 
 fluence upon the national religiousness in its vital character. 
 He had the same right to his own dogmatic scheme that is pos- 
 sessed by any other polemical writer. The question is, How 
 did he urge it ? Was he painstaking or superficial ? Was he 
 frivolous or serious ? Was he honest or sophistical ? Can any 
 man who has read Burns intelligently hesitate about the 
 answer? His theology, such as it is, is his own. It is not a 
 parrot's lesson, committed to memory and believed, or at- 
 tempted to be believed, on simple authority. It is the fruit of 
 his own intensest mental toil exercising itself in a hnnger and 
 
14 
 
 "thirst after truth and reality on such materials as lay within 
 his reach. I -wish I could believe that those -who condemn 
 him have thought for themselves with a tithe of his earnestness 
 on the great problems of religion. Then look at the zeal, the 
 fervor, the fury of sincerity with which he advocates his views. 
 You cannot say, here is a mere shallow triflcr, a heartless 
 scoffer. No! You may dislike what he says, but ypu must 
 see that with all his heart he believes it, and that his fierce 
 warmth and energy spring from his conviction that it would be 
 well for you if you believed it, too. Consider also the entire 
 a'ld uncalculating honesty with which he spoke his mind. 
 Well was he entitled to denounce with an unsurpassed — I had 
 almost said unsurpassable — vehemence of withering sarcasm 
 the wretched vices of cant and hypocrisy — not only the wicked 
 cant and hypocrisy which is used by its selfish praotiser as an 
 instrument for oppressing others, but also the weak yet well- 
 meaning cant and hypocrisy which is employed mert ly for the 
 «ake of peace or self-defence. Bums was patient of neither. 
 He abhorred the one as base and essentially diabolical, and he 
 scourged it as near to death as it will go ; he despised the other 
 as unmanly, and rebuked it as opposed to the progress and best 
 interests of man. And he qualified himself for this office by 
 being himself utterly open and frank with the world. No cue 
 ^an say to him, " Physician, heal thyself." He has said some- 
 "where : 
 
 "Ay free affhan' your story tell 
 
 When wi' a bosom crony ; 
 But still keep somethiag to yourseP 
 
 Ye scarcely tell tae ony." 
 
 The rule is a good one for private life ; but for the jirophet, 
 the teacher of mankind, concealment of his thoughts is treach- 
 ery to society. And in his public relations Burns did not 
 "still keep something to himsel'." If ever a great human soul 
 was freely and fully unveiled for the delight or the instruction 
 of the world it was the soul of Burns. 
 
 And will any man tell me that such a way of handling the 
 topics of religion is not supremely wholesome — nay, supremely 
 neoe.'isary ? Have we not enough of spiritual sneaking and fub- 
 mission to authority? enough of simpering or stupid indiffer- 
 ence to the whole subject ? enough of sham earnestness and 
 unctuous make-believe, of deliberately selfish, or weakly pru- 
 dential pretense ? Are we not the better of a visitation by a 
 spirit of power like that of Burns, self-reliant and original, paB- 
 sionately earnest, severely, nay relentlessly, veracious ? The 
 blast may be keen, but it kills the germs of corruption ; the 
 dniught may be bitter, but the end of it is health. I ain well 
 aware that to claim the author of the "Holy Fair," "The 
 Ordination," the " Address of the Unco Guid," the " Dedica- 
 tion to Gavin Hamilton," and " Holy Willie's Prayer " (though 
 Burns never gave that to the world) as exercising a salutary 
 
15 
 
 influence upon religion, seems to many people paradoxical, if 
 not profane. And so it would be if religion were bimply a 
 thing for childish men and the weaker order of women. I can 
 quite understand that they should be scandalized beyond meas- 
 ure by Burns. But religion is for mature and strong natures 
 as well as for the juvenile and the feeble. It is long since it 
 was known that there must be milk for babes and strong meat 
 for men. It is right not to offend the little ones unnecessarily, 
 but we cannot let the weak brother have everything his own 
 way. In private it may be demanded by kiudtess to avoid 
 chafing his tender skin, but the public teacher must not keep 
 him exclusively in view, but set forth principles in their ful- 
 ness, and use freely any weapons of argument or lidicule, or 
 whatever else can enforce his meaning, since men must be pro- 
 vided for as well as children. And whoever affects a manly 
 religiousness will be none the worse, but greatly the better, for 
 the study of Burns, provided he understands the province of 
 art. That yrosiso, however, is essential. For there are many 
 natures with a good deal of manliness in them, that are woven 
 of so coarse a fibre on the sesthetie side of them that they are 
 incapable of apprehending the prerogatives and utilities of art. 
 The business of art is to represent both the real and the 
 ideal ; both nature as it is and nature as it might be conceived 
 to be. But it passts no judgment upon the moral rectitude or 
 otherwise of what it paints; that belongs to another depart- 
 ment. A few years ago an excellent nobleman used to impor- 
 tune the House of Lords to provide skirts and trousers for the 
 naked statues in the National Gallery. That good man had no 
 conception of the function of art. He thought that sculpture 
 was preaching indecency, while it was only representing na- 
 ture. These are the sort of people who cry "0, fy !" at many 
 of the stronger things in Burns. They think he is exhorting, 
 where he is only painting. "Holy "Willie's Prayer" may be 
 shocking ; but why ? because Holy 'Willie himself is shocking. 
 If the ipirror gives an ugly reflection of an ugly face, it is sim- 
 ply to the credit of the mirror, whatever it may be to the face. 
 This same idea of art, if they could only understand it, would 
 put many foolish people right upon the subject of Burns' ama- 
 tory and bacchanalian effusions. The poet really does not rec- 
 ommend unchastity and drunkenness ; not oven free love or 
 free drinking. But the human spirit wants and needs an oc- 
 casional escape from the restraints of conventional rules. Con- 
 ventional law is, much of it, a necessary evil. We submit to 
 it because we see that it is for the common good. But it is 
 not always the idea of life which we would sketch for our- 
 selves, and it is the function of poetic art to furnish a dream- 
 land to which we may occasionally betake ourselves when 
 weary with the jog-trot of every-day life, and enjoy in fancy 
 what we deny ourselves in fact. Such ideal Bohemianisms are 
 very harmless ; they tell neither upon purse, nor health, nor 
 
16 
 
 xaorals. Nay, even those coarser productions which Burns 
 himself never published (he kept back, out of regard for the 
 sensitive, even such pure and powerful works of art as the 
 "Jolly Beggars" and "Holy Willie's Prayer,") but which, 
 without his consent, and contrary to his desire, were given to 
 the world by the relic hunters, who rifled the dead man's pock- 
 ets and ransacked bis writing-desks, who interviewed the Paul 
 Prys that peeped through his key-hole, and the Dogberrys. 
 that watched his door of nights to see if he kept elders' hours — 
 even these are not fairly judged without reference to the idea 
 of art. A great artist with a passion for his art may be 
 tempted to make figures of beauty out of dirt, if there be no 
 better material near, even though he should soil his fin^ 
 gers in the making ; but in criticising hiir, it should always be& 
 question whether it is the dirt that he delights in or his own 
 deftness in handling it. This I will say, that, taking Burns' 
 i writings all in all, and most certainly taking the writings- 
 whose publication he himself sanctioned, there breathes 
 through them a purity of spirit and a healthiness of tone that 
 are in edifying contrast to the insinuating sensualisms of many 
 of our modern poets and novelists whose praise is in all the 
 booksellers. 
 
 I have dwelt so long upon the point on which I thought I 
 might speak to most purpose that I can say but a sentence on 
 the subordinate aspects of Burns' moral influence, and must 
 pass over altogether the consideration of his works as a contri- 
 bution to the emotional happiness and the intellectual wealth 
 of nations. What noble or manly virtue fails to find recogni- 
 tion and support in his pages ? Is it the first virtue of all, in- 
 dependence, resolution to rely on one's self, or suffer? — 
 ' ' Though much indebted to your goodness, I do not approach 
 you, my lords and gentlemen, in the usual style of dedication, 
 to thank you for past favors f that path is so hackneyed by 
 prostituted learning that honest rusticity is ashamed of it. 
 Nor do I present this address with the venal soul of a servile 
 author, looking for the continuation of those favors ; I was 
 bred to the plough, and am independent." Happy the people 
 whose spirits are nurtured on sentiments like these, and who 
 nerve themselves for the struggle of life by recollecting that 
 " A man's a man for a' that." Is it an unworldly preference 
 of mind to money ? 
 
 " O Thou who giee us each gnid gift, 
 Gle me o' wit and sense a lift. 
 Then turn me, if Thou please, adrift 
 
 Through Scotland wide ; 
 Wi' cits nor lairds I wadna shift. 
 
 In a' their pride." 
 
 Is it sympathy with everything that feels ? Where can it be 
 better learnt than from intercourse with that catholic affection 
 which touched at the one pole the simple piety of the " Cot- 
 
17 
 
 ter's Saturday Night," and at the other the uproariouB freedom 
 of the "Jolly Beggars ;" which gave us the mingled humor and 
 pathos of "Mailie's Elegy ;" which saddened at the terror of 
 the wildfowl of Lock Turit, and linked the despair of the des- 
 olate field-mouse with its own ? Is it the beauty of domestic 
 affection and duty ? Who teaches so often and so well that — 
 
 *' To make a happy fireside clime. 
 To weans and wife, 
 That's the true pathos and sublime 
 Of human life." 
 
 Is it the whole circle of the patriotic sentiments ? Turn to 
 " Scots wha hae," and end where you please and when you 
 can. Is it faithfulness to the tender memories of bygone years ? 
 Go to the exquisite plaintiveness of " Highland Mary," or lo 
 the broken-hearted trance of "Mary in Heaven." Is it the 
 crowning grace of self-command ? Hear it chronicled in the 
 writer's own heart's blood : 
 
 '* The poor inhabitant below. 
 Was quick to learn and wise to know, 
 And keenly felt the friendly glow 
 
 And softer flame ; 
 But thoughtless follies laid him low, 
 
 And staiued his name. 
 
 " Reader, attend, whether thy soul 
 Soars fancy's flights beyond the pole. 
 Or darlilipg grubs this earthly hole 
 
 In low pursuit — 
 Know, prudent cautious self-control 
 
 Is wisdom's root." 
 
 With the life of Burns we are not speeia'ly concerned here. 
 It is not so much the plouahboy of D )onside, the flax.spinner 
 of Irvine, the farmer of Ellisland, or the ganger of Dumfries, 
 as the poet of Scotland and of humanity whom we commem- 
 orate, and for whom we make ourselves responsible. But 
 though it is the poet we honor and thank Heaven for, we are 
 not ashamed of the man. Others may drive Burns from their 
 bosom; I dare not. He had the temptations that beset brilli.mt 
 genius — temptations from which his detractors are mostly free. 
 He had the temptations of a position in life most tryingly in 
 contrast with his lofty gifts His career has been explored by 
 literary detectives and gossipmongers with a diligence that 
 would have unearthed uuedifying revelations in the history of 
 the greatest saint in the calendar, and which is virtually equiv- 
 alent to the extraction of secrets by the thumbscrews and the 
 rack. Yet through it all I recognize a nature noble, manly, 
 tender, striving towards the ideal good. No stain of meanness 
 or dishonor rests upon his name. He owed no man anything. 
 The greatest man of his country, and aware that he was so, he 
 dug drains and gauged barrels, and did not grumble. He 
 fought in secret with passions stronger than any of us can 
 
18 
 
 know, and bewailed his evil in agonies of penitence which we 
 would need bis capacity of feeling to understand ; and he died 
 at thirty-seven, before the battle of the spirit was done. Let 
 the faultless put him from them. Perhaps it is right ; but they 
 must put me from them too. A sinful, struggling man myself, 
 I cannot abandon my great and gifted and sorrowing brother 
 in his grief. " Restore such an one in a spirit of meekness, 
 considering thyself lest thou also be tempted," is a sacred law 
 which I dare not and wish not to disobey. Grateful to Heaven 
 for his work, proud of his name, mingling our sympathy with 
 the recollection of his sorrows, we recall to mind to-night the 
 asserter of truth, the smiter of dishonesty, the teacher of wis- 
 dom, the psalmist of human brotherhood, the preacher of every 
 manly virtue, the revealer of human character, the master at 
 once of pathos and of wit, the sweet singer of the tender feel- 
 ings, the pcet of our country, yet the possession of mankind, 
 Eobert Burns. 
 
 WASHINGTON— FESTIVAL OF 1874. 
 
 Mr. W. E. Smith introduced the subject-matter of 
 the festival in a few remarks. He said : 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : It is my agreeable duty, as presi- 
 dent of the Burns Olub of Washington, to bid you a hearty 
 welcome. "We thank you, one and all, for uniting with us to 
 honor the name, and, if it be possible, to increase the fame of 
 him — 
 
 " Who sang of Scotia's loves and joys 
 As poet's ne'er had snng, 
 And woke a strain which echoes down 
 
 The ages ever more. 
 Americaa forest aud Australian plain 
 Swell the impassioned notes from shore to shore. 
 Immorlal Burns ! deep in the inmost core 
 Of Scotia's heart, thy image lies enshrined ; 
 'Midst tear& and smiles, beloved more and more, 
 ■ The poet and the priest of human kind. 
 What neida thy name the aid of puny art ? 
 It lives eternal in the Imman heart. 
 
 What wealth of glory Scotia owes to thee, 
 Immrrtal Burns ! 
 Her noblest one ! 
 
 In the far west thy star hesperian glows ; 
 In the far east it shines another sun. 
 Bend low, my boys, before this simple shrine ! 
 Bend low to Burns, to poesy divine !"■' 
 
 These lines, fresh from Auld Scotland, I found as a contri- 
 bution from Dunbar to the poet's coiner of a rural paper, pub- 
 lished in Haddington. They indicate clearly the true posi- 
 lion of the poet, and may be taken as proof of the truth of 
 Thomas Carlyle's prophecy that time would but increase the 
 fame of Burns. His article in the Edinburgh Renew, 1828, cou- 
 
19 
 
 taining this prophecy, together with John Wilson's great essay 
 on the genins of the poet, did much to teach the people to think 
 aright about Burns. 
 
 Another glorious exposition of the poet, and a truly Christian 
 examination of the character of the man, was made by the 
 Bev. Dr. Wallace, jast two years ago, in a speech at the birth- 
 day celebration in Edinburgh. This gentleman's intellectual 
 strength seems worthy of his famous name. 
 
 His speech, together with Carlyle's letter about Burns' Clubs 
 generally being aimless things, with a very little of Burns and 
 a great deal of self in them, induced us, as a clab, to examine 
 ourselves, and to make an effort to elevate and give a higher 
 aim to our association. The Barns Club as now established is 
 for the purpose of gathering together the various editions of 
 Barns' works — biographies, illustrations, eulogies, portraits, 
 in short, everything that can in any way illustrate the land, the 
 literature, and character of Burns— to have regular meetings 
 whereat his poems may be read, his songs sung, addresses 
 delivered, criticisms read, and to make an earnest effort to 
 honor his memory by a celebration of his birihdiy ; thus to 
 keep in remembrance our undying admiratioa of the noble 
 qualities which distinguished him while living. 
 
 Ladies and gentlemen, with your kind co-operation we can 
 make the Burns Club of Washington worthy of the man and 
 the place ; worthy of the author of that grand Declaration of 
 Independence — 
 
 "A man's a man for a' that.'' 
 
 Worthy of the home of that political idea — 
 
 " The rank is but the guinea's stamp. 
 The man's the gowd for a' that." 
 
 Lidies and gentlemen, words cannot utter the gladness of 
 my own heart, and I speak also for those congenial co-operat- 
 iag spirits who have worked and struggled together to secure 
 this magnificent meeting in honor of our darling poet. 
 
 We are proud to have with us those whom the nation de- 
 lighteth to honor with her highest positions, to speak for the 
 immortal author of — 
 
 "Soots wha ha'e wi' Wallace bled." 
 
 Again let me thank you in the name of the Club for your 
 presence. 
 
 The president then read the following note from the 
 Speaker of the House of Eepresentatives, the Hon. 
 James G. Blaine : 
 
20 
 
 Fifteenth Stbeet, 29i/i .January, 1874, 
 
 Thursday Evening. 
 To the President of the Burns Olub : 
 
 A hoarseness which has been coming on me through the day 
 deprives me of the pleasure I had anticipated of proposing a 
 toast to the memory of Burns, and adding a word of introduc- 
 tion to my friend, G-en. Garfield. My task, however, would be 
 superfluous, even if I could be present, for the General needs 
 neither introduction nor commendation to the Burns Club. 
 He will speak to you in a manner that will make you thank mo 
 for considerately staying away and not delaying his eloquent 
 words. 
 
 The Scotch are always proud of their birth and their blood ; 
 and this pride, I venture to testify, will bear transplanting, and 
 can be inherited in its full strength at least down to the fifth 
 generation. Wherever you find one who traces even a remote 
 relationship to "Auld Scotia," you will find a, hearty admirer 
 of Burns. But genius is not confined to lands or latitudes. 
 It belongs to the whole world ; and to-night on three conti- 
 nents and the far-off isles of the Southern Sea the memory of 
 the great poet will be celebrated with admiration, enthusiasm, 
 and affection. 
 
 In haste, sincerely yours, 
 
 J. G. BLAINE. 
 
 Gen. James A. Garfield, on coming forward -to 
 respond to the toast " The day we celebrate," was 
 greeted with warm applause. He said : 
 
 I have no doubt that the kind reference to me by the Honor- 
 able Speaker, in the letter which has just been read, springs 
 from his remembrance of the fact that a few years ago he and 
 I enjoyed the great pleasure of visiting the land of Barns, and 
 making the tour of the Scottish lakes in company. And who 
 that has once seen it can forget suoh a land, or wonder that its 
 rugged and noble beauties should have added inspiration to 
 the genius of its poets ? Who can forget the excursion along 
 the baaks of the Doon, where every turn of the road and river 
 has been immortalized by the ride of " glorious" Tam ? 
 
 I take this occision, Mr. Chairman, to thank you and the 
 Burns- Club of Washington for the pleasant opportunity which 
 you have afforded me to turn aside for a moment from the 
 exacting duties of public life and from its sharp conflicts, to 
 enjoy this festival, and to unite in doing honor to the memory 
 and genius of the foremost song-writer of the world. 
 
 It is usual to praise Burns chiefly because of the great con- 
 trast between the splendor of his work and the humbleness of 
 his origin. But genius needs no apologies on that score ; and 
 I do not hesitate to challenge the comparison between his 
 
21 
 
 •works and those of any other poets who have wrought in the 
 same field. 
 
 In the highest class of lyric poetry three, names stand emi- 
 nent. Their field eovers eighteen centuries of time, and the 
 Ihree men are Horace, Beranger, and Bnrns. It is an interest 
 ing and suggestive fact that each of these sprang from the 
 humble walks of lite. Each may be described as one 
 
 "Who begs a brother of the earth 
 To give h^m leave'to toil," 
 
 and each proved, by his life and achievements, that, however 
 bard the lot of poverty, " a man's a man for a' that." 
 
 Permit me to glance a moment at the characteristics of each. 
 Horace, the sou of a freedman, was bom among the wild scenes 
 and simple virtues of the Sabine country. His opportunities 
 for education were greater than either of the other two with 
 whom I am comparing him. But he began his career as a 
 treasury clerk, living on a pittance that scantily furnished him 
 with "bread and lentils;" and yet, in that humble position, 
 he laid the foundation of a fame whose glory shines down 
 across the ages with lustre ever brightening as the centuries 
 advance. 
 
 The Eomau language was the severe language of law, of 
 war, of stately oratory ; but it was songless, until Horace came 
 and attuned its measures to the melody of the lyre. He had 
 a right to boast that he v as " the first to wed Italian measures 
 to jiloliau song." It may have been thought boastful in him , 
 when, in the last ode of the third book, he ventured to predict 
 that his verses would be remembered as long as the high 
 priest of Apollo and the silent vestal virgin should climb the 
 steps of the Capitol. But his prophecy has been more than 
 fulfilled. Fifteen centuries ago the eacred fires of Vesta went 
 out, never to be rekindled. For a thousand years Apollo hr.s 
 had no shrine, no priest, no worshipper on the earth. The 
 steps of the Capitol, and the temples that crowned it, live on' v 
 in dreams. But the songs of Horace are read and admired i ■ 
 all nations, wherever learning and culture are cherished. His 
 pages glow to-day with all the brightness and beauty that de- 
 lighted the social life of Italy eighteen hundred years ago. 
 
 Beranger, the second in the group, was a child of poverty, 
 torn in an obscure corner of France. Catching the spirit of 
 liberty inspired by the French revolution, he crowned the rude 
 dialect of Normandy with the glory of immortal song. He 
 not only ennobled his native tongue, but fired the heart of 
 France with an enthusiasm and fervor which only a born poet 
 can create. 
 
 Who will deny that Bnrns is not only worthy to stand in this 
 group, but that in many respects his glory outshines that of 
 the Koman and the Norman ? Born in a country whose natu- 
 ral beauty is in strange contrast with the sterility of its soil, 
 
22 
 
 his early life was passed in the extremest poverty. Doomed 
 to the hard slavery of mechanical toil ; receiving not more 
 than seven pounds sterling for the labor of a whole year, yet, 
 out of this narrow and oppressive life, which ended at the 
 early age of thirty-eight, he poured forth melodies so sweet 
 and so perfect that they echo and re-echo to-day in all lan- 
 guages and in all hearts as the voice of Great Nature singing 
 to her children. If Horaoe_ attuned the stately language of 
 Rome to the lyre, Burns lifted up^ into immortal song, and 
 saved from perishing, the dialect of his native land. If Horace 
 "raised his mortals to the skies," we may say, with truth, that 
 Burns "drew the angels down." 
 
 Taine, the great French critic, admits that Burns is greater 
 than Beranger ; and time alone can test the relative greatness 
 of Burns and Horace. Burns was indeed the prophetic voice 
 of the new age — the age born of the French revolution. Kising 
 above the trammels of birth and poverty, he spoke for the 
 great voiceless class of laboring men throughout the world, 
 while kings and countries listened in wonder and amazement. 
 
 A great writer has said that it took the age forty years to 
 catch Barns, so far was he in advance of the thoughts of his 
 time. But we ought not to be surprised at the power he ex- 
 hibited. We are apt to be misled when we seek to find the 
 cause of greatness iii the schools and universities alone. There 
 is no necessary conflict between nature and art. In the highest 
 and best sense, art is as natural as nature. We do not wonder 
 at the perfect beauty of the rose, although we may not under- 
 stand the mysteries by which its delicate petals are fashioned 
 and fed out of the grosser elements of the earth. We do not 
 wonder at the perfection of the rose, because God is the artist. 
 When He fashioned the germ of the rose tree, He made possi- 
 ble the beauties of its flower. The earth and air and sunshine 
 conspired to unfold and adorn it ; to tint and crown it with 
 peerless beauty. When the Divine Artist would produce a 
 poem. He plants the germ of it in a human soul, and out of 
 that soul the poem springs and grows as from the rose tree the 
 rose. 
 
 Barns was a child of nature. He lived close to her beating 
 heart ; and all the rich and deep sympathies of life grew and 
 blossomed in his own. The beauties of earth, air, and sky 
 filled and transfigured him : 
 
 *' He did but slug because he must. 
 And piped but as the liauc's sing." 
 
 With the light of his genius he glorified "the banks and 
 braes " of his own land ; and, speaking for the universal humaa 
 heart, has set its sweetest thoughts to music — 
 
 " whose echoes roll from soul to soul, 
 And grow fore7er and forever." 
 
23 
 
 WASHINGTON— FESTIVAL OF 1875. 
 
 Mr. "W. E. Smith opened the proceedings of the 
 evening as follows : 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : As President of the Burns Club I 
 bid you welcome, and thank you for uniting with us to do 
 honor to one of the most gifted beings that ever adorned and 
 delighted our race. One hundred and sixteen years ago 
 llobert Burns was born. 
 
 *' Upon a stormy, winter niglit, 
 Scotland's bright star first rose in sight, 
 Beaming upon as wild a sky 
 As ever to prophetic eye 
 Proclaimed that Nature had on hand 
 Some work to glorify the land — 
 Within a lonely cot of clay 
 That night her great creation lay. 
 
 *' Coila— the nymph that round bis brow 
 Twined the red-berried holly bough — 
 Her swift-winged heralds sent abroad, 
 To summon to that bl< ak abode, 
 All.who on genius still attend 
 For good or evil to the end. 
 They came obedient to her call — 
 The immortal infant knew them all. 
 
 " Sorrow and Poverty — sad pair — 
 Came shivering through the wintry air : 
 Hope and Pity and Love were there. 
 
 ' Wit with a harum scarum grace. 
 Who smiled at Laughter's dimpled face. 
 Labor, who came with sturdy tread. 
 By high-soul ed Indep ^ndence led. 
 Care, who sat noiseless on the floor, 
 While Wealth stood up outside the door. 
 
 ' Then Coila raised her hoUied brow 
 And said: ' Who wi 1 this chiid endow ? ' 
 Said Love, * I'll teach him all my lore. 
 As it was never taught before ; ' 
 Said Pity. ' It shall be my part 
 To Rift him with a gentle heart.' 
 Said Independeace, stout and strong, 
 * I'll make it to wage war with wrong.' 
 Said Wit, ' He shall have mirth and laughter. 
 Though all the ills of life come after.' 
 
 * Warbling her native wood notes wild. 
 Fancy but stooped and kissed the child, 
 While through her locks of golden hair 
 Hope looked down with a smile on Care. 
 
 ' Said Labor, ' I will give him bread ; ' 
 ' And I a stone when he is dead,' 
 Said Wealth, while Shame huog down her head. 
 
24 
 
 *' ' He*U need no monument,' said Fame ; 
 
 ^ I'll give him au immortal name ; 
 
 When obelisliB iu rain fall, 
 
 Proud shall it t>tand above them all ; 
 
 The daisy on the mountain side 
 
 Shall ever spread It far and wide ; 
 
 Even the roadside thistle-down 
 
 Shall blow abroad his bigh rtnown.' 
 *' Said Time, ' That name while I remain 
 
 Shall still increasing honor gain, 
 
 *Till the sun Binks to rise no more. 
 
 And my last sand falls on the shore 
 
 Of that still, dark, and unsailed sea, 
 
 Which opena on Eternity.' " 
 
 These words by Thomas Miller but speak in prophetic rhap- 
 sody of what will be the fate of the name we are met to honor 
 to-night. The ovation to Burns on his centennial birthday was 
 the greatest honor ever paid to a poet. When in 1844 his 
 son returned from India 70,000 persons honored him for his 
 father*s sake by a festival on the banks of "bonnie Doon." 
 Christopher North then said: *' Burns is among the highest 
 order of human beings who have benefited their race by the 
 expression of noble sentiments and glorious thoughts," This 
 estimate is not overdrawn. '* Has he not elevated honest rus- 
 ticity, lightened the burden of care, aided to reconcile poverty 
 to its lot, advanced the dignity of labor, placed a crown on the 
 head of an honest man * though e'er so poor,' and proclaimed 
 him * King o' men for a' that ? ' " 
 
 The president then read the following letter from 
 the Hon. Wm. P. Frye : 
 
 Washington, January 16, 1875. 
 W. R. Smith, Esq., 
 
 Freisideiit of the Burns Clu^: 
 My Dear Sir : I accepted, with pleasure and with pride, yonr feind 
 invitation to address the Burns Club at their annual meeting, but unexpect- 
 ' edly find that I cannot fulfill the eng^ement, it having been determined by 
 the committee, of which I am a member, to go to Louisiana at once. To sim- 
 ply eay that I regret this is a cold expression of my feelings, for I should 
 delight to speak, from a full heart, of Scotland, of Wallace, of Bruce, and of 
 Burns, who has made for tliezn all a glorious immortality. 
 
 And yet our mission south, it seems to me, would have been regarded by 
 your great poet a sacred duty. Smce that sweetest songster that ever sang 
 warbled the magical wordsa, *' A man's a man for a' that," a great struggle 
 has been wa^ed throughout the world, sometimes silently, sometimes ter- 
 ribly, to prove (he fidelity of Burns to truth in that utterance. Our own 
 country has been the theatre of one of the fiercest conflicts, the issue of 
 which is not even yet made certain. May the end show — 
 ** The honest man, though e'er sae poor. 
 Is king o' men for a' that." 
 May Heaven blef s old Scotland, her mountains and valleys, her Doon and 
 her Clyde, her Yarrow and her Tweed. "Long may her hardy sons of rustic 
 toil be blessed with liealth and peace and swet-t content," We bless thy 
 memory, too, Robert Barns, who po loved old Scotia, her men ard women, 
 even her mice and daisies. '* hfr silly sheep" and "courie cattle," aye, who 
 loved all things both great and small, and couldn't hate even " auld Mckei- 
 ben." 
 
 Respectfully, WM. P. FRYE. 
 
JEAN ARMOUR, 
 
 ROBERT burns' W[FE. 
 
25 
 
 The Hon. James Monroe, of Ohio, was then intro- 
 duced, and made a felicitous and scholarly address, in 
 which he compared the various British poets, placing 
 Burns as next to Shakespeare in his power of touching 
 the universal heart. There were no Milton clubs, no 
 Byron clubs, not even a Tennyson club ; while Burns 
 clubs existed all over the world, wherever the English 
 language was spoken, and they would continue to exist 
 for all time. 
 
 The president of the Club, in introducing Hon. S. S. 
 
 Cox, said : 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : I have now the pleasure to intro- 
 duce to you the American biographer of his ' ' Satanic Majesty in 
 Literature;" as a " Buckeye Abroad" in search of "Winter 
 Sunbeams" he no doubt made some further acquaintance with 
 his majesty, and can perhaps enlighten us on the doings of 
 Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick, or Clootie. Our poet treated Satan 
 kindly and was " wae to think upon yon place, e'en for his 
 sake ;" so does his American biographer. 
 
 Hon. S. S. Cox was received with hearty applause, 
 and spoke as follows : 
 
 Your president introduces me somewhat vaguely as one of 
 the biographers of Satan, I had supposed my humble article 
 waq long since forgotten. It is said in Scripture that the devil 
 and .ill his works shall perish. I wonder that all the works on 
 the devil himself have not perished. But really, he is not bo 
 black after all. He has many winning ways. He is as much 
 entitled to a biographer as a witch to a cat. I can see that my 
 fi'ieud, the president, takes a family and national pride in him. 
 When the article referred to was printed it was for the Knick- 
 erbocker Magnsine, and intended to glorify "Old Nick" in lit- 
 erature. How I omitted Burns' "Auld Hornie" or "Clootie" 
 I can scarcely tell. I was quite young then; had not mixed 
 much in society or politics; had not come to Congress; and, 
 therefore, my knowledge of deviltry was limited. The longer 
 I live the more I see of it — and perhaps the more we live the 
 more we tolerate the evil genius. 
 
 Indeed, the Scotch devil, as organized by the genius of 
 Barns, is a eulogy to his better qualities. It seems at first 
 blush to be suggested by Milton's apostrophe to the Prince, 
 who led the embattled Seraphim against Heaven : but his is a 
 hetter Satan than the warrior of Milton. He takes no delight 
 in the squealing sinner. Old " Clootie " has a nice send-oS 
 for his noted name. Burns makes him rage, to be sure, lilse a 
 Toaring lion, " tirling the kirks." He reproduces the wilJness 
 
26 
 
 of the "lonely glen" and ruined castle amidst the windy win- 
 ter nights. He calls on the warloclis and hags of the kirk- 
 yards, the water kelpies of the ford, and the spunkies of the 
 moss as his associates, until he brings his Satan nunc pro tune 
 into Paradise incog, to give the infant world a " shog," and 
 then makes him play practical jokes on Job, until he fairly 
 boiled to pardon him by the benevolent universaUsm of the 
 1 ist verse — 
 
 " I'm wae to think wpon yon den — 
 E'en for your sake," 
 
 which, out of the patois, means — I don't want a hell, even to 
 put the ddvil in. 
 
 Bat this remarkable good-natured devil of Burns has some 
 peculiarities of character and conduct which reminded one of 
 the comic devil of the sacred drama of the Middle Ages. He 
 is not the devil represented in ancient or modern times. He 
 is more Robert Burns than Robert Le Diable. He has as little 
 of the Assyrian devil as of the Prometheus of ^Slschylus. But 
 is he not comprehended in the universal' genius of Goethe ? 
 Mephistopheles takes any shape. He is the standing Diabolos 
 of the Greek, the adversary of Job, the serpent of Eden, the 
 dragon of the Revelation, and always jolly. I am not sure but 
 that the infinite variety of the article which Washington and 
 its lobbies furnish was anticipated by Goethe, if not by Burns. 
 Where did not Mephistopheles lurk ? Where do we not find 
 that spirit of evil? Not the old theological animal, with horn 
 and hoof, such as the excommunicated from Kirk were pos- 
 sessed of, and such as old wives tell of; but the sly devi], 
 which dances in the eye of beauty, gambols in the polka and 
 german, and on the faro table ; puts on the claw-hammer of 
 the courtier and the frock of the preacher ; pores over the mis- 
 sals of the scholar and the " ay es and noes " of Congress.' He 
 is to be found in the imperial palace or the poorest hovel. Xou 
 may see this universal spirit in the bourses of speculation, and 
 he conceals under the big ulster overcoat the forked tail and 
 lightnings of his unscrupulous inttllect! The Burns devil is, 
 however, something kinder and more human than this univer- 
 sal genius. In one poem Burns makes him an exciseman, and 
 though not strictly defined, it may be said of him, as some one 
 said of Raphael's devil in the Sistine Chapel, "If lie is not the 
 devil, it is somed — d thing or other." He would not have the 
 devil here for a time, although he would not object to a " devil 
 of a time." 
 
 The truth is, we each carry our devil around with us as a 
 part of our personality. Why should not Burns' idea of in- 
 carnate evil be as jolly as himstlf, who was an excisemai? 
 And what pleasure could the exciseman take in the unnatural 
 destruction or unjust distribution of Scotch whiskey? I can 
 well imagine how, in the regions of northern Scotlaud, where 
 an Englishman (Shakespeare) located a "blasted heath," you 
 
27 
 
 know, and peopled its air with beings of metaphysical entity, 
 that a grand and terrific ideal of the spirit of evil should arise, 
 like Hecate or the witches of Macbeth, from the dreary mists 
 of the Highlands. But Burns' devil, while he once rode on 
 the blasts with Tam O'Shanter, had a, more social way — as a 
 government official. He was not a conservator of fruits and 
 flowers, like you, Mr. President. Ho was a simple government 
 detective. He seized spirits, it is true, as Satan does, and he 
 confiscated them to the best purposes. He would have been 
 an invaluabij aid under any administration. I think he may 
 now and then be detected in our " secret service." 
 
 But, ladies and gentlemen, the geniiis of Burns was not lim- 
 ited to creations of evil. It would have been more grateful to 
 me this evening to have discussed the genial and etherial quali- 
 ties of his song. How he sympathized with nature ; its beau- 
 ties, its attractions, its humility, and its heart. How sweetly 
 flowed the current of his rhyme, as he gave new purple to the 
 heather and new blush to the rose ! How the hours winged 
 their angel flight in the loved homes which he peopled with his 
 genius ! 
 
 With all the splendid galaxy of Scotch intellect, and wherever 
 the Scotch mind goes —as far as a thistle can fly, and as fre- 
 quently as it can produce — no such name as that of Bobert 
 Barns has gone so far or been heralded so prodigally and 
 warmly. If Watts in invention, Adam Smith in eoonomyj 
 Brougham in eloquence, Knox in theology, Hume in history,. 
 Sydney Smith in wit, Jeffrey in criticism, and Scott in fictioa 
 were all combined in one effulgent star, it would not equal the. 
 splendors of Burns ! When Burns wrote the couplet — 
 
 '* Rank is but the guinea's stamp, 
 A man's the gowd for a' that " — 
 
 he made his name foremost among those who have championed 
 the natural nobilities of mankind. It expresses the • ' legiil 
 tender " of the Creator 1 Fresh out of the natural " pockets, "^ 
 where the richest nuggets nestle, he drew the ingot which lo 
 alloy of human error ever tarnished or can ever destroy. A 
 man's the gold for all that may happen to him in the accidents, 
 fortunes, deprivations, and vicissitudes of time. As such he 
 will be tested in the furnace of affliction, and in the great assay 
 when the genuine shall be separated from the counterfeit. 
 
 I have referred to the intellect of Scotland, whose honors are 
 recorded by Buckle. Where has not that intellect gone ? Is it 
 limited to any hemisphere or sphere? Is not Livingstone him- 
 self a Scotchman ? He went into the very heart of Africa. 
 When Barns sings that a man's a man, I know just what he 
 means. Why, sir, there is a splendid Presbyterian barber in 
 this city — as black as black can be. His name is Campbell. 
 He comes of the clan. He is surely a Scotchman. I know it, 
 if not by his slogan, then by his brogan. But if the Scotch: 
 
28 
 
 liivingstone could find the interior of Africa, why may not 
 Campbell ? My distinguished friend from North Carolina, (Mr. 
 Waddell,) who honors his State as well by his studies as by his 
 political eminence, who is now present and blushing while I 
 «peak, made an interesting brochure to prove that the Welsh 
 and Irish were in North Carolina in the 12th century. A 
 Jortiori, why should not the Campbells be found in Africa? 
 
 In conclusion, therefore, I rise from the spirit of deviltry 
 enshrined in the poetry of our bard to those other and more 
 f levated creations which have added a lustre to Caledonia, and 
 made a new history for the lyric muse 1 May your enjoyment 
 of this anniversary be unalloyed by the presence of any other 
 than that of the blithe and bounie spirit which makes that 
 muse as mirthful as it is immortal ! 
 
 THE FESTIVAL OF 1876. 
 
 Mr. George Cowie, president, delivered a short but 
 appropriate address, welcoming in a most cordial man- 
 ner the guests of the Club, to the number of over six 
 hundred, and then introduced Hon. Wm. P. Fete, of 
 Maine, who spoke as follows : 
 
 Mk. Peesident : I saw in the press a few days since that I 
 was to deliver an address before this Club ; that it would un 
 •doubtedly sparkle with wit and abound in eloquence. What 
 a sarcasm ! If I dreamed that you were expecting anything of 
 ■this kind I should at once follow the example of the fellow 
 who, having forced head and shoulders through his neighbor's 
 paling, being discovered and accosted with, "You infamous 
 scounjrel, where are you going?" replied, "Out," and went. 
 I have no fountain on which I can draw at sight for eloquence 
 and wit. I have a heart beating always in sympathy with Scot- 
 laud, and a love going out abundantly to Scotchmen and 
 Scotchwomen. How could it be otherwise ? In the House I 
 am flanked by my friends McDiU and McDougal, while in my 
 rear sit Wilson and Puillips, and right before me is the smil- 
 ing, honest face of my old friend, the Cerberus of the Flower 
 Garden, Smith. Besides, my wife, who came to me through 
 the McDougals and Gregorys, is so much of a Scotchwoman 
 that she rules her household with love and a rod — the rod being 
 in the majority. So true is she to her ancestry, if she had been 
 standing beside the stern old Scotchwoman who listened to 
 the piteous appeals of Hume, the infidel, for help, as he was 
 linking in the quagmire, and made him repeat the Lord's 
 Prayer and the Ten Commandments as condition precedent to 
 his salvation, I think she would have cried "Amen and amen !" 
 These reasons for sympathy surely ought to inspire me to say 
 a few kind and honest words to you on this anniversary occa- 
 
29 
 
 sion. Wherever I go, whatever circumstances surronnd me, 
 I am loyal to the North. I am as true to it as was "John 
 Ilatteras" to the Pole. Even if I should go mad, as did he, 
 still my steps, with his, would ever turn thitherward. I love 
 its mountains and its valleys, its rivers and its lakes, its ice 
 and its snow, its barrenness and its ruggedness. I love its 
 men who earn their bread by the sweat of the brow ; who nevt r 
 saw that land which, "tickled with a hoe, would l.iugh with 
 a harvest; " who plough, harrow, dig with spade and mattock, 
 and then are supremely content if only it smiles with an av- 
 erage crop. They are hardy, honest. God-fearing, and coun- 
 try-loving. The distinguished gentleman who is to deliver 
 the address, to which this is only a feeble introduction, will 
 forgive me, I know, if I seem somewhat exuberant over my 
 own, even if he thinks my imagination is somewhat too warm 
 over " the eternal solitudes of snow which mantle the ice- 
 bound North." He can well afford to, for the man who made 
 for the ignoble Duluth such a glorious immortality in an hour's 
 time, is abundantly able to take care of the blue-grass region* 
 of the fertile Kentucky or " the fragrant savannas of the sun- 
 lit South." 
 
 In early boyhood, romance and poetry had made sacred to 
 me Old Scotia's Shores ; had clothed with a glorious immor- 
 tality her Ben Lomond, Ben More, and Ben Ness ; her Cb'de 
 and her Tay, her Tweed and her Dee — crystallized them all 
 into monuments of liberty, loyalty, and patriotism. And 
 when later in life the pages of history opened to me I learned 
 that neither novelist nor poet had told half of the wonderful 
 story. Caledonia, way back in the ages of darkness, peopled 
 by fierce, savage,, and idolatrous tribes, but brave and liberty- 
 loving, almost alone of the nations, fought succesbfully the 
 Eoman empire ; so brave and so fierce were they that this 
 mistress of the world thought it discreet to wall them in. 
 
 Scotland, for more than a thousand years, for liberty and 
 the right to worship God according to the dictates of con- 
 science, fought the whole power of England, until the blood 
 of her brave sons washed every mountain side, drenched every 
 valley, tinged every lake and river. Now you know well that 
 the cause a nation espouses and fights for has a reflex action 
 upon her people. Spain fought for conquest and slavery, and 
 to-day Is a bankrupt beggar among the nations, impotent to 
 hold in subjection one little Island of the Sea. 
 
 Home fought for glory and empire, and she is only known 
 in history. Our Republic fought for liberty, equal rights, and 
 humanity, and this year the world will join in her Centennial. 
 Scotland came out from her fiery furnace of war purified. 
 Those savage, idolatrous tribes of Caledonians gradually grew 
 into the brave, intelligent. God-fearing soldiers, who jast be- 
 fore entering the battle at Bannockburn, to a man knelt, and 
 with uplifted hearts and hands asked help from the God of 
 
30 
 
 Battles. King Edward, seeing them, cried, " The cravens al- 
 -ready ask mercy;" to -whom an English baron repled : "Sir, 
 they ask no mercy of us ; they pray for help from God. They 
 will conquer or die." And they conquered ! Her chieftains, 
 fierce and cruel, became the William Wallace, as bravo as 
 Henry, and as chivalrous as Bayard ; the Robert Bruce, who 
 could defend the pass against an army unaided, who could 
 slay a score of armed men with his own hands, and yet be as 
 gentle and tender as a woman ; who, when his army was re- 
 treating before an overwhelming force of English and Irish, 
 hearing one day an outcry, and on inquiry, learning that it 
 was a poor camp-follower giving birth to a child, and in a 
 terrible agony of fear lest she might fall into the hands of the 
 " Child eating Barbarians," called a council of his officers, 
 flaid to them, "Shame on the man born of woman, nursed 
 by her tenderness, who will desert a mother in the hour of 
 her travail and pain," ordered a halt of his army, and held 
 them there until the woman recovered, then marched to the 
 mountain in safety. That single act of gentleness consecrated 
 iis name beyond all the glories of the battle-field. The orator 
 relates of Sir Philip Sidney, that mortally wounded, borne 
 from the battle-field, thirsty and dying, a cup of cold water 
 was passed to him ; he seeing a soldier by the roadside, gave it 
 to him, saying, "Brother, thy necessities are greater than 
 mine." That single act of self-forgetful sacrifice consecrated 
 the name of Sidney more than all the battles fought or victories 
 won. These are the highest type of the soldier, the christian 
 «oldier, the warrior of courage and gentleness. Slowly, but 
 purely, Scotland climbed to the highest type of civilization, 
 that born of education and religion, of the school and the 
 Bible, of the altar of the Cotter's Saturday Night in every 
 house. Look upon her in the 18th century. In the 17th it 
 was enacted that a school-house should be erected in every 
 parish, and a schoolmaster appointed. Early in the 18th her 
 people were more generally educated than any other in Europe. 
 The world knew and admired her historians, her poets, her 
 philosophers, her scientists, and the nations paid tribute to her 
 universities at Edinburgh, Glasgow, St. Andrew's, and Aber- 
 deen. The Edinburgh Heview and Blackwood's Edinburgh Magor- 
 jsine are to-day unrivalled in the world, while Edinburgh is the 
 only rival of London in the British Empire as a publishing 
 centre. In the arts, sciences, agriculture, and manufactures she 
 has no occasion to hide her face. Such a country — so cold, so 
 barren, so mountainous, so torn and distracted by ruthless 
 wars — only 300 miles long and 200 wide, with such glorious 
 fruits of the highest civilization ! Whence did it come ? From 
 the perpetual contest tor liberty and equal rights and religion, 
 the school-book, and the Bible. This civilization, indigenous 
 to the cold countries of the north, crossed the ocean, landed on 
 the bleak, barren coast of Massachusetts, toiled, suffered, and 
 
31 
 
 fought, until one hundred years ago, it declared, in words that 
 shall live forever, making glad the hearts of toiling millions, 
 " All men are created free and equal," and a clarion voice from 
 Scotia's shore replied, "A man's a man for a' that." Under its 
 inspiration, independence was achieved, and England lost from 
 her diadem one of its brightest jewels. But barbarism, too, 
 had crossed the same ocean, landed on thefriendly, fertile, and 
 sunny shores of the South ; it flourished, grew strong and 
 stronger, until it flaunted its black flag in the very face of civ- 
 ilization, and threatened its own terrible supremacy. 'Then, 
 again, this pure spirit of the North put on the armor, girded 
 on the sword, and went forth to do battle. Trusting to the 
 God of Battles, inspired with "A man's a man for a' that," it 
 conquered, and no more forever shall a slave tread the wine- 
 press in our fair land. The war over. Christian civilization 
 said, forgive, poured out the balm of Gilead without stint or 
 measure, and this Centennial year we have a country free, 
 united, purified, and sanctified. 
 
 More than a century ago this glorious Old Scotland, inspired 
 by such a civilization, labored and brought forth a child, laid 
 him in a mud covered hut, gave him to a mother who loved 
 the " dear God," and to a father who feared Him. Then the 
 boy, with no lingering step, with satchel and boob, went to the 
 humble school, while at home the master and the mistress 
 taught, 
 
 ** An' O, be sure to fear the Lord alway, 
 
 And mind your duty duly morn and night ; 
 Lest in temptation's path ye gang astray 
 
 Implore bis counsel an' aasistiiig might, 
 They never sought in vain that sought the Lord aright." 
 
 Thus instructed he grew apace, and next we find him a 
 •whistling plow-boy, turning the daisy beneath the share, and 
 driving " the cruel coulter thro' poor mouser's cell." He 
 studied, he worked, he prayed, he loved, he suffered — he sang, 
 until one day he wrote bis name, " Eobert Burns, Poet." And 
 one hundred years from the day this child was born, every city 
 in the civilized world celebrated his anniversary. Historians, 
 poets, philosophers, orators, and the great men of all lands 
 paid him homage, while the lowly sang his praises. To no 
 man was ever such homage paid before, and I think I may 
 safely say that the name of "Robert Burns, Poet," has been 
 and is dearer to more hearts than any other except alone that 
 of Him who was born in a manger, toiled, suffered, and died 
 that we might live. From whence came this wondrous power ? 
 How did he win this priceless gift of universal love ? It was 
 not bought with money. The price he paid was the mud-cov- 
 ered hut, the sterile land, the poverty, the sorrow, the labor, 
 the suifering life among the lowly. Scotland, her mountains, 
 her glens, her lakes, her rivers, her battles, her heroes, her 
 schools, and her altars, were his inspiration. Nature, with her 
 
32 
 
 rod, touched his heart, and pure limpid streams of sympathy, 
 of charity, of loyalty, of purity, of wisdom, of mirth, and of 
 satire, sprang forth — heart speaking to heart. This is why nil 
 men have given him an immortality as tender, loving, and 
 blessed as he gave to Mary in heaven. All men ; ah. no ! there 
 are a few cold-blooded, puritanical — I beg pardon of the 
 Puritans — Pharisees, who s e in Burns the scoffer, the wiue- 
 bibber, the reveller, the keeper of low company. They stand 
 upon a pedestal of ice and look down upon his warm, loving 
 heart, and feel no responsive warmth in theirs. Even such 
 must yield some respect to Burns, the exciseman. He per- 
 formed his duties faithfully ; he was economical in his expen- 
 ditures ; he stole no stamps, and though his salary was only 
 fifty pounds a year he asked no back pay, demanded no in- 
 crease, passed no crooked whiskey. To be sure, he was now 
 and then late at his office, but, like Charles Lamb, went home 
 early enough to make it up. Even Henderson, with all his 
 eloquence, with all the facts in the case, forgetting his sworn 
 duty as a prosecuting officer, and throwing into the scales 
 against the prisoner all of the imaginary infamies of the most 
 infamous administration of ancient or modern times, could 
 not have forced from a j iry of his peers a verdict of ' ' guilty. " 
 
 '^ Then fill the sparkling goblet high, 
 
 And let no discord stain it ; 
 Let joy illume each manly eye. 
 
 While to the dregs we drain it ! 
 To Burns ! To Barns I The King of Song ! 
 
 Whose lyre shall charm all ages ! 
 Mirth, Wisdom, Love, and Satire strong, 
 
 Adorn his deathless pages." 
 
 Hon. J. Pboctor Kxott, of Kentucky, was next 
 introduced, and addressed the assembly in the follow- 
 ing happy vein : 
 
 Mr. Chairman, when 1 received the very complimentary 
 notice that I was expected to be present and address you this 
 evening it occurred to me that the gentlemen who had it in 
 charge to arrange the programme for the occasion had cer- 
 tainly committed a most singular mistake. I could conceive 
 of no possible reason why they should consider me capable of 
 contributing a single additional ray to the resplendent halo 
 which will forever encircle the immortal name of Scotland's 
 favorite bard. It is true I had always felt proud, and perhaps 
 somewhat more pious and patriotic than most people, on ac- 
 count of my direct descent from the sturdy old Covenanters 
 who fought for the faith of their fathers at Drumclog and 
 Bolhwell's Brigg, and whose descendants signed the original 
 declaration of independence at Mecklenberg. Yet I can 
 so ircely refrain from exclaiming, in the language of my saintly 
 old friend, Holy 'Willie : 
 
 " what was I, or my generation. 
 That I should get sic exaltation? " 
 
33 
 
 Bat since I have listened to the address of the distinguished 
 gentleman whose eloquent periods still tingle through ever^ 
 fibre and tissue of our souls, and hold us as under the spell of 
 some delicious enchantment, I am satisfied that you will agree 
 with me in the opinion that they have been guilty of a still 
 more egregious blunder — one, in fact, which ought to be suffi- 
 cient to blast their reputation as literary caterers for all time to 
 come — the miserable, unpardonable mistake at a festival like 
 the present, of bringing on the bacon and cabbage after we 
 have had the strawberries and ice cream. It is but charitable 
 to suppose, and perhaps but justice to the gentlemen who in- 
 vited me, to say that I am here to-night purely by mistake. 
 For I cannot imagine that they could have had any secret 
 malice against me which they wished to gratify by enticing me 
 into one of the most difficult and trying positions I ever occu- 
 pied in my life — the humiliating predicament of being com- 
 pelled to realize, to its fullest extent, my own utter and abject 
 poverty of thought and expression when measured by the 
 theme npon which I am expected to speak. For what can I 
 say of the genius of Robert Burns which has not been already 
 said a thousand times, and that, too, with an elegance, a 
 beauty, and a force of diction far beyond the reach of any 
 power that I possess ? What single thought can I suggest to 
 any genuine lover of his species — especially to those whose 
 halcyon days were spent on the ' ' banks and braes o' bonnie 
 Doon," or by the classic waters of " the winding Ayr" — that 
 could make the pulse beat faster or the eye grow brighter than 
 the simple mention of the poet's name ? Indeed, I have many 
 and many a time remarked It as a most singular fact that you 
 may take one by one the brightest stars in all the wondrous 
 constellation of Scottish genius; you might recite, if you 
 could, with an angel's tongue, the story of their sublime achieve- 
 ments in arms and In art, In science, in literature, in history, 
 in politics, in poetry, in philosophy, or in theology, and you 
 would fail to excite such a flame of national pride and enthusi- 
 asm in any genuine Scotchman's bosom as will be kindled by 
 simply mentioning Ihe name of Burns. You may inscribe 
 their names high as you will on the scroll of human fame, and 
 he will write the name of his country's rustic poet high above 
 them all ; even above that of Sir Walter Scott, the mighty 
 monarch of the human heart — 
 
 ** Who on mind^s high steep could stand 
 And marshal -with his sceptered hand 
 The whirlwind and the clond. 
 And write a name too bright to die. 
 In lightning traces on the sky," 
 
 The secret source of that mysterious magnetism which Inva- 
 riably attracts the warm, reverent affection of the Scottish 
 heart to the deathless memory of their country's poet, and 
 which will abate no jot of its resistless power while Ben Lo- 
 
34 
 
 mond stands or the Tweed rolls onward to the Eea, lies far 
 deeper than the mere sentiment of national pride or passionate 
 patriotism. It is not because he delighted to delineate, in their 
 own beautiful and expressive dialect, the delicate shades of 
 Scottish feeling, or the peculiarities of thought and manners 
 exhibited in the life of the Scottish peasant. It is not because 
 bis graphic pictures of rural life, his marvellous descriptions of 
 local scenery, his resistless bursts of rarest humor, and the ra- 
 diant brilliancy of his inimitable flashes of wit are all tinged 
 in every lineament with a patriotic pride in the land which 
 gave him birth and a deathless love for his native heath. It is 
 not for any of these reasons alone, nor yet for all of them com- 
 bined, that Burns occupies the first and highest place in the 
 affections of his countrymen. 
 
 It is because he was not simply the poet of Scotland, but the 
 poet of humanity everywhere ! It is because he possessed, as 
 no other poet ever did, the universal alchemy of genius which 
 enabled him to bring to light the pure virgin gold in everything 
 he touched. It is because there is not a single fibre in the 
 heart of any human being which cannot be touched in some 
 way by the simple magic of his unaffected muse. It is be- 
 cause the majestic soul exhibited in his artless lays was as ex- 
 pansive as his race. As I have seen it somewhere said of him, 
 " Born in obscurity, reared in adversity, rejoicing in the smiles 
 of nature, and scorning the frowns of fortune, he lived and 
 died the poet of the people — the great unnumbered masses who 
 eat their humble bread in the sweat of their own honest 
 brows." Other great poets had their own peculiar excellen- 
 cies. Milton, awed by a sublimer theme and loftier language ; 
 Shakespeare delighted while he instructed mankind in a deeper 
 and a more diversified philosophy; Byron challenged admira- 
 tion by bolder and wilder flights of the imagination ; but the 
 Scottish peasant stands alone and peerless in painting the joys 
 and the sorrows, the agonies and the transports of the humble 
 sphere in which he lived. Of all lyric poets the most prolific 
 and versatile, the simplest and the most touching, and to his 
 own class the truest and the most elevating. Aye, the most 
 elevating 1 " Holy Willie " will always elevate his sanctimon- 
 ious nose at the " Jolly Beggars." He will never cease to point 
 his Pharisaical finger at "honest Tam O'Shanter" and " Souter 
 Johnnie," and you may take your "■Bible oath" that whenever 
 he recurs to the scene at " Poosie Nancy's," ' or when "Willie 
 brewed a peck o' maut, and Hab and Allan cam to pree," he 
 will tarn up the whites of his pious eyes in "holy rapture," 
 and exclaim : 
 
 *^I bleBS an' praise tby matcllleBS might. 
 Whan thousands thou has left in night, 
 
 That 1 am here afore thy sight, 
 For gifts and grace, 
 
 A bumin' and a sbinin' light 
 To a' this place. 
 
35 
 
 " Tet I am here, a chosen sample ; 
 To show th7 grace is great an' ample; 
 I'm here a pillar in thy temple, 
 
 Strong as a rock, 
 A guide, a buckler, an' example. 
 
 To a' thy flock." 
 
 Yet there is a fervid piety pervading every line of the "Cot- 
 ter's Saturday Night," of which such canting hypocrites are 
 as utterly ignorant as the inhabitant of the farthest hill-top of 
 NovaZembla is of the perfumed zephyrs that sigh through the 
 flowery vales of Araby the blest. There is a purity of senti- 
 ment, a refinement of feeling, and a delicacy of thought in 
 the address to the "Wee, modest crimson-tipped flower," of 
 which such thin-blooded, hollow-hearted, soulless shams have 
 no more conception than a milestone has of the sublimest 
 symphonies of Mozart or Mendelssohn. When I speak of the 
 elevating influence of Burns' poetry, however, I do not allude 
 simply to those marvellously beautiful scintillations of thought 
 or those exquisitely delicate expressions of refined and ennob- 
 ling sentiments which are found scattered like unstrung dia- 
 monds through almost everything that ever emanated from 
 his pen, but to the dignity of the manhood which beams out 
 of almost every line he ever wrote. 
 
 He has been called the poet of the poor. Not because he 
 spent his genius in piteous wailing for the hardships and 
 miseries of the millions whose lives are doomed to a ceaseless 
 lound of toil ; not because he "taught them to repine at their 
 condition, nor yet to despise or envy the advantages of rank 
 and wealth and culture, but because he taught them to realize 
 the dignity and majesty of their own nature, and to stand erect 
 in the image of their Creator. It is this sublime philosophy, 
 this grand pivotal idea in all the creations of his genius, that 
 makes him truly the poet of humanity everywhere, and ren- 
 ders his name and memory sacred, not only with his own 
 countrymen, but with honest, high-minded, whole-souled men 
 everywhere. 
 
 There is another particular in which Burns has been rarely, 
 if ever, equalled, and which renders his poetry peculiarly 
 fascinating to all classes of men and to every grade of the hu- 
 man intellect ; I mean its aphoristic character — the wealth of 
 wisdom he sometimes puts up in the smallest packages. For 
 example, out of the innumerable instances which might be 
 cited, what could possibly be more expressive of the utter un- 
 certainty of all human calculations than his simple line : 
 
 " The best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley." 
 
 Where can be a more stinging rebuke to human vanity and 
 self-conceit than in his oft-quoted ejiiculation — 
 
 " Oh, wad some power the gif tie gie us 
 To see oursels as ithers see us ? " 
 
36 
 
 In the simple power of word-painting — no, not painting, but 
 that marvellous faculty of producing a real life-picture by a 
 few rapid strokes of his magic pencil — Burns was never ap- 
 proached by any other poet that ever lived on earth. As an 
 illustration of this I will pass by his universally acknowledgeil 
 master-pieces and select at random a single sketch from his 
 almost illimitable gallery. Take, for instance, a single verse 
 from the address " To a Haggis :" 
 
 " His knife see raslic labor dight 
 And cut you up wi' ready slight, 
 Trenching your gu«hing entrails bright 
 
 Like ony ditch ; 
 And then, oh, what a gloriouo sight, 
 Wann-ieekin', rich ! " 
 
 Can't you see the delicious, tempting dish steaming before 
 them ? Does not the delightful odor it exhales upon the sur- 
 rounding air make^oar very month water? Then see the 
 auld guidman and his '' buirdly cheels," armed with their horn 
 spoons, rushing to the attack : 
 
 " Then horn for horn they stretch and strive, 
 De'il tak' the hindmost, on they drive, 
 Till a' theic weel-swall'd kytes belyve 
 
 Are bent lik*^ drums ; 
 Then auld suidman, maist like to rive, 
 
 * Be'hanbit ' hums." 
 
 Why, Tennyson's world-renowned description of the charge 
 of the six hundred at Balaklava cannot compare with it. 
 
 There is yet another peculiarity in which Burns stands with- 
 out a parallel in the annals of poetic literature, and that is in 
 the simple, unaffected patriotism and the manly pride in his 
 own class which crops out in almost every sentence that flowed 
 from his untutored pen. I need go no further for an illustra- 
 tion of this than the very poem from which I have just quoted, 
 where he contrasts the child of affluence, reared on dainty 
 viands, and the hardy, haggis-fed peasant of his native heather. 
 Look at this picture : 
 
 " Poor deVil ! See him owre his trash. 
 As feckless as a wither'd rash. 
 His spindle shank a guid whip-lash, 
 
 His nieve a nit ; 
 Thro' bloody flood or field to dash, 
 
 Oh how unfit ! 
 
 But mark the rustic, haggis-fed. 
 
 The trembling earth resourida his tread, 
 
 Clap in his walie nieve a blade. 
 
 He'll mak* it whlssle ; 
 And legs, and arms', and heads will shed. 
 
 Like taps o' thrissle." 
 
 Nevertheless, as I have already said, mankind will never 
 consent that Burns shall be monopolized by a single nation. 
 Humanity loves and claims him. Vast as would be the chasm 
 
37 
 
 in the literature of his own country if the glorious offspring of 
 hia genius were stricken from it, vaster still would be the void 
 in the universal heart of man if the wide space filled by the 
 memory of Burns would be empty ; a memory which will 
 grow brighter and yet brighter until time itself shall wax old 
 as doth a garment, and. the heavens be rolled together as a 
 scroll. 
 
 BUBNS. 
 
 [On seeing a lock of Sighlavd Mary^s hair in the Burns 
 monument at Ayr^ Scotland ] 
 [From Scotch Americau, 1872.] 
 
 Oh, thou fair lock, thou tress of palish gold ! 
 
 What thronging memories come at sight of thee! 
 How is the scroll ot time again unrolled, 
 
 Revealing that which never more may be. 
 
 I see thee waving round a brow of snow. 
 
 As gently by the summer wind caressed, 
 And wanton o'er a cheek of softest glow, 
 
 Or nestle loving on a poet's breast. 
 
 And once again the hawthorn's snowy bough 
 
 Sc liters its sweets upon the evening air ; 
 Again I hear the poet's raptured vow 
 
 That bids thee know that " bliss beyond compare." 
 
 And thou hast felt the throb of that great heart, 
 That Sorrow s darkest frown could not subdue. 
 
 But braving angry Fortune's fiercest dart, 
 WasBtill to manhood and auction true. 
 
 Oh, Scotia ! well raayst thou love 1 hy rustic bard ; 
 
 For who, I'ke he, has told it far and wide, 
 What generous bosoms, noble hi-arts and true. 
 
 Are wont beneath the hodden-gray to hide ? 
 
 How thine own children, in their lowly shades. 
 
 At Poverty's chill fount may oft have drank. 
 But *' blessed with health and p;ace and sweet content," 
 
 May still defy the guinea stamp of rank. 
 
 Ob, wond'rous bard ! thy gei ius, spark divine, 
 
 Dops still this very atmosphere pervade ; 
 And in its light thy human frailtits tine 
 
 As morn's obscuring mists before the sun must fade. 
 
 Oh. wondrous bard ! we s'ill this truth must own, 
 
 Th*>t thou in magic numbei-s erst did say ; 
 Of all the meteor-lishts around thee thrown, 
 
 'Twas light from heaven that led thy steps astray. 
 
 Oh, Scotia ! as in the years Time's ceasel' ss course has run, 
 Through what may come to thee by Fortune's future turns, 
 
 Ackuowledge him thy own, thy darling son, 
 And still adore the name of Robert Burns. 
 
 Mrs. Wm. R. Smith. 
 
38 
 
 BURNS. 
 
 To a Rose^ brought from near AUoix>ay Kirk^ in Ayrshire^ in the autumn 
 of 18J2, 
 
 "Wild Rose of AUoway ! my thanks ; 
 
 Thou 'juindBt me of that autumn 
 noou 
 When first we met upon *' the banks 
 
 And braes o' bonny Doon." 
 
 Like thine, beneath the thorn-tree's 
 bough. 
 My sunny hour was glad and brief, 
 We've crossed the winter sea, and 
 thou 
 Art withered— flower and leaf. 
 
 And will not thy death-doom be 
 mine— 
 Tha doom of all things wrought of 
 clay — 
 And withered my life's leaf like thine, 
 Wild Bose of Alloway ? 
 
 Not so his' memory, for whose sake 
 My bosom bore thee far and long. 
 
 His — who a humbler flower could 
 make 
 Immortal as his song. 
 
 The memory of Bums- a name 
 That calls, when brimmed her fes- 
 tal cup, 
 
 A nation's glory and her shame, 
 In silent sadness up. 
 
 A nation's glory— be the rest 
 Forgot— she's canonized his mind ; 
 
 And it is joy to speak the best 
 We may of human kind. 
 
 I've stood beside the cottage bed 
 Where the Bard-peasant first drew 
 breath ; 
 
 A straw- thatched roof above his head, 
 A straw-wrought couch beneath. 
 
 And I have stood beside the pile. 
 His monument — that tells to 
 Heaven 
 
 The homage of earth's proudest isle 
 To that Bard-peasant given ! 
 
 Bid thy thoughts hover o'er that 
 spot, 
 Boy-Minstrel, In thy dreaming 
 hour; 
 And know, however low his lot, 
 A Poet's pride and power. 
 
 The pride that lifted Bums from 
 earth, 
 
 The power that gave a child of song 
 ABcendeiicy o'er rank and birth. 
 
 The rich, the brave, the strong. 
 
 And if despondency weigh down 
 Thy spirit's fluttering pinions then 
 Despair— thy name is written on 
 The roll of common men. 
 
 There have been loftier themes than 
 his, 
 And longer scrolls, and louder 
 lyres, 
 And lays lit up with Poesy's 
 Purer and holier fires : 
 
 Yet read the names that know not 
 death; [there; 
 
 Few nobler ones than Burns are 
 And few have won a greener wreaih 
 
 Than that which binds his hair. 
 
 His is that language of the heart, 
 In which the answering heart 
 would speak. 
 Thought, word, that bids the warm 
 tears start. 
 Or the smile light the cheek ; 
 
 And his that music;, to whose tone 
 The common pulse of man keeps 
 time, 
 
 In cot cr castle's mirth or moan, 
 In cold or sunny clime. 
 
 And who hath heard his song, nor 
 knelt 
 
 Before its spell with willing knee. 
 And listened, and believed, and felt 
 
 The Poet's mastery. 
 
 O'er the mind's sea, In calm and 
 
 storm,- [showerp. 
 
 O'er the heart's sunshine and its 
 
 O'er Passion's moments bright and 
 
 warm. 
 
 O'er Beason's dark, cold hours ; 
 
 On fields where brave men "die or 
 do," 
 In halls where rings the banquet's 
 mirth. 
 Where mourner's weep, where lovers 
 woo, 
 From throne to cottage hearth ? 
 
 What sweet tears dim the eyes un- 
 shed. 
 What wild vows falter on the 
 tongue, 
 When " Scots wha hae wi' Wallace 
 bled," 
 Or "Auld Lang Syne " is sung ! 
 
 Pure hopes, that lift the soul above. 
 
 Come with his Cotter's hyn.u of 
 
 praise. 
 
 And dreams of youth, and truth, and 
 
 love. 
 
 With '' Logan's " banks and braes. 
 
 And when he breathes his master-lay 
 Of AUoway's witch-haunted wall. 
 
 All passions iu our frames of clay 
 Come thronging at his call. 
 
39 
 
 Imagination's world of air, [glee, 
 And our own worlds its gloom and 
 
 ^it, pathos, poetry, are there, 
 And death's sublimity. 
 
 And Bums— though brief the race he 
 
 ran, [trod. 
 
 Though rough and dark the path he 
 
 Lived -died— in form and soul a 
 
 Man, 
 
 The image of his God. 
 
 Through care and pain, and want and 
 wo, [heal, 
 
 With wounds that only death could 
 Tortures— the poor alone can know. 
 
 The proud alone can feel ; 
 
 He kept his honesty and truth, 
 His independent tongue and pen. 
 
 And moved, in manhood as in youth, 
 Pride of his fellow men. 
 
 Strong sense, deep feeling, passions 
 strong, 
 
 A hate of tyrant and of knave, 
 A love of right, a scorn of wrong. 
 
 Of coward and of slave. 
 
 A kind true heart, a spirit high, 
 That could not fear and would not 
 bow, 
 
 Were written in his manly eye 
 And un his manly brow. 
 
 Praise to the bard ! his words are 
 driven, 
 Like flower-seeds by the fair winds 
 sown. 
 Where'er beneath the sky of heaven, 
 Tne birds of fame have flown. 
 
 Praise to the man ! a nation stood 
 Beside his coffin with wet eyes. 
 
 Her brave, her beautiful, her good, 
 As when a loved one dies. 
 
 And still, as on his funeral day, 
 Men stand his cold earth-couch 
 around. 
 
 With the mute homage that we pay 
 To cousecrated ground. 
 
 And consecrated ground it is. 
 The last, the hallowed home of one 
 
 Who lives upon all memories. 
 Though with the buried gone. 
 
 Such graves as his are pilgrim's 
 shrines. 
 Shrines to no code or creed con- 
 fined— 
 The Delphian vales, the Falestlnes, 
 The Meccas of the mind. 
 
 Sages with wisdom's garland 
 wreathed, 
 Crowned kings, and mitred priests 
 of power. 
 And warriors with thei r bright sword 
 sheathed, ' 
 
 The mightiest of the hour ; 
 
 And lowlier names, whose humble 
 home 
 Is lit by Fortune's dimmer star. 
 And there — o'er wave and mountain 
 come. 
 From conntries near and far ; 
 
 Pilgrims whose wandering feet have 
 pressed 
 The Switzer's snow, the Arab's 
 sand, 
 Or trod the piled leaves of the West> 
 My own green forest-land. 
 
 AH ask the cottage of his birth. 
 Gaze on the scenes he loved and 
 sung. 
 
 And galher feelings not of earth 
 His fields and streams among. 
 
 They linger by the Doon's low treest 
 And pastoral Nith, and wooded 
 Ayr, 
 And round thy sepulchres, Dum- 
 fries ! 
 The poet's tomb is there. 
 
 But what to thena the sculptor'sa't. 
 His funeral columns, wreaths and 
 urns? 
 Wear ihey not graven on the heart 
 The name of Robert Burns ? 
 
 —Fitz-Qreene Halleck, 
 
40 
 
 ODE TO THE ME^fORY OF BURX8. 
 
 BY THOMAS CAMPBBLI.. 
 
 Soul of the Poet ! wlieresoe'er, 
 Keclaimed from earth, thy genius 
 
 plume 
 Her wiugs of immortality : 
 Huspeud Ihy harp in happier sphere, 
 And with tliiue influence illume 
 Ihe glbduess of our jubilee. 
 
 Ai)d fly like fiends from secret spell, 
 liiscuid and strife, at Bubns' name, 
 lixorcised by his memory ; 
 Fur he was chief of bards that swell 
 The heart with songs of social flame, 
 And higti delicious revelry. 
 
 And love's own strain to him was 
 
 given 
 To warble all its ecstacies 
 "With Pythian words unsought, uu- 
 
 will'd— 
 Love, the surviving gift of Heaven, 
 The choicest sweet of Paradisf . 
 In life's else bitter cup distill'd. 
 
 Who that has melted o'er his lay 
 To Mary's soul, in heaven above. 
 But pictured sees, in fancy strong. 
 The landscape and the livelong day 
 That smiled upon their mutual love ? 
 "Who that has felt forgets the song ? 
 
 Nor skill'd one fl ime alone to fan ; 
 His country's hidh-sourd peasantry 
 What patriot-piide ho taught ! how- 
 much 
 To weigh the inborn w orlh of man ! 
 And rustic li'e and poverty 
 Grow beautiful beneath his touch. 
 
 Him, in his clay-built cot, the Muse 
 Eutranced, and show'd him all the 
 
 forms 
 Of fairy like and wizard gloom ] 
 (Tha . ouly gifttd Poet views), 
 Ihe genii tf the floods and storms. 
 And marshal shades from Glory's 
 
 tomb. 
 
 On Bannock-field what thoughts 
 
 arouse 
 The swain whom Bubns' song in- 
 spires ! 
 Beat not his Caledonian veins, 
 As o'er th' heroic turf he ploughs, 
 With all the spirit of his sires 
 And all their scorn of death and 
 chains 7 
 
 And see the Scottish exile, tann'd 
 By many a far and foreign clime, 
 Bend o'er his home-born verse, and 
 weep 
 
 In memory of his native land, 
 
 ^^ ith love that scorns the lapse of 
 
 time. 
 And ties that stretch beyond the 
 
 deep I 
 
 Encamp'd by Indian rivers wild, 
 The soldier, resting on his arms, 
 In Bubns' carol sweet recalls 
 The scenes that blessed him when a 
 child, { charms 
 
 And glo V8 and gladdens at the 
 Of Scotia's woods and waterfalls. 
 
 Oh deem not, 'midst this worldly 
 
 strife^ 
 An idle art ihe Poet brings : 
 Let high 1 hllosophy control 
 And sages calm the stream of life, 
 'Tls he refines its fountain- springs. 
 The nobler passiuns of the soul. 
 
 It is the Muse that consecrates 
 The native banner of the brave, 
 Unfurling, at the trumpet's breath, 
 Uose, thistle, harp; 'tis she elates 
 To sweep the field or ride the wave, 
 A sunburst in the storm of death ! 
 
 And thou, young hero, when thy pall 
 Is cross'd w iih mournful sword and 
 
 plume. 
 When public grief begins to fade, 
 Aud ouly tears of kindred fall, 
 ^^ ho but the Bard shall drei^s thy 
 
 tomb. 
 And greet with fame thy gallant 
 
 shade ! 
 
 Such was the soldier— Bubns, forgive 
 That sorrows of mine own intrude 
 In strains to thy great memory due. 
 In verse like thiue, oh ! could he live, 
 The friend I mourn'd— the brave, 
 
 the good — 
 Edward that died at Waterloo ! 
 
 Farewell,high chief of Scottish soDg! 
 That couldst alternately impart 
 Wisdom and rapture in thy page, 
 Aud brand each vice with satire 
 
 strong, 
 Whose lines are mottoes of the heart, 
 Whose truths electrify the sage. 
 
 Farewell I and ne'er may envy dare 
 To wring one baleful poison-drop 
 From the crush'd laurels of thy bust: 
 But while the lark sings sweet in air, 
 Ktill may the grateful pilgrim stop. 
 To bless the spot that holds thy dust. 
 
41 
 
 [Reprinted, by special permisiion of Mr. Andrew Carnegie, from 
 Liber Scriptorum, "The First Book of The Authors Club," 
 1893.] 
 
 GENIUS ILLUSTRATED FROM BURNS. 
 By Andrew Carnegie. 
 
 Daya come to all in this life when control of the mind is lost. 
 The brain refuses to be harnessed and to do our bidding. The 
 will is no longer master. It refuses to work or even to be in- 
 terested. The charms pall which hitherto have never failed to 
 allure it and bring it back to peace ; but as these days of trial 
 gradually soften, and hope returns, the unruly steed, the brain, 
 submits again to some degree of discipline. 
 
 It was my fate last winter to pass through weary months of 
 agonizing fear, and it may be interesting, perhaps, to others to 
 note my experience, and learn what first enabled me to regain 
 desired control of myself, for a man should no more permit 
 his thoughts than his horse to run away with him. The brain 
 must be made to tread the desired paths and answer bridle and 
 spur instantly. He who cannot dismiss a subject from his 
 thoughts at will is not master of himself. After many day and 
 night walks around the library, and the handling of book after 
 book, every one more insijjid than another, and all pushed 
 back, and no rest found, it came upon me one day that a search 
 through my favorite Burns for nothing but pure gems would 
 be an interesting excursion. I should dig from the mine only 
 gems, and build an Aladdin's palace of dazzling beauty with 
 the glittering stones ; should gather them together in a pile, 
 and gloat over them as the Prince of Ind over his jewels or the 
 miser over his heaps of gold ; should string them together as 
 a rosary, and count my beads as holy men do, and tbus bring 
 peace to the troubled soul. No dainty repast upon the delica- 
 cies bred in a book would answer. I here must revel and gorge 
 to surfeit — no sip of the nectar of the gods, but unlimited 
 draughts, eveu to mental intoxication, would give peace and 
 refuge from the " brain still beating on itself." 
 
 This idea was the first which interested me. It naturally 
 led to speculations upon the nature of literary genius. 
 
 Men have exercised themselves inventing definitions for 
 genius, as men have sought for the Philosopher's Stone or for 
 perpetual motion, and with like disappointment, for none of 
 these three thiugs is to be found. Certainly genius is not to 
 be defined ; it is a thing of the spirit, and assumes too many 
 forms for words to embrace. "An infinite capacity for taking 
 trouble" is one attempt; "genius is work," another. Both 
 seemingly describe the very reverse of the quality to which 
 we apply the word genius. "Talent does what it can, genius 
 what it must " comes nearer to it ; true in a sense, but not all 
 the truth. While it is impossible to define genius, I said to 
 
42 
 
 myself, Lst ns try whether we cannot at least discern it, lay 
 onr fingers upon it, saying, Lo I here is the genuine essence. 
 
 Gems are proverbially small. In the vast mines of literature 
 we find them surrounded with much ordinary material. The 
 gem itself is comprised in a line or a word, which should be 
 easily recognized. When it is found we cry " Eureka ! " with 
 safety. Here it is. This is genius. We say of much that pre- 
 cedes and follows this one line, or two, in rare instances this 
 one word or two: " Several could have written this — talent is 
 equal to it; bat this one word or line, never. That comes not 
 from a toiler below looking upward. The gods threw this 
 from above into the soul of genius." Talent has climbed 
 Parnassus, crag over crag, with us upon its shoulders, and 
 called upon us to look back and enjoy the lovely pastoral 
 scene below. Genius alone has scaled the height, and revealed 
 to us the enchanted land beyond and over the mountain-top 
 and all around the vaulted dome. 
 
 The fire of genius, we say, and all are iagreed that one 
 essential element of genius is this "fire." No amount of 
 smoke, no amount of heat suffices. The smoke passes away, 
 the heat becomes intense, and the flame bursts forth, or 
 genius there is none. Wherever genius touches, the divine 
 spark sets fire to the pile. 
 
 The test of genius in any writer, therefore, seems to be 
 whether he has power to lead the understanding and sympa- 
 thetic reader step by step, line after line, into regions more 
 and more elevated, stirring the heart, the altar upon which the 
 Godlike is placing the elements which he is to set blazing anon. 
 
 It will be admitted that if the title of genius can be properly 
 applied to any human being, it is to that phenomenon, the 
 Scottish plowman. No one questions but that he was a pure 
 child of genius. 
 
 I took the works of the poet from their place of honor, next 
 those of the "god of gods "in the kingdom of poetry. My 
 working copy begins with the " Twa Dugs," the Newfoundland 
 of the lordling, with its " braw brass collar," and the other the 
 wisest and truest of all, that which creeps farthest into the 
 core of the heart — the Scotch collie. The dog of the pour 
 poet describes the joys of his own humble home. Here is a 
 picture of the home of honest poverty which sets all dancing, 
 young and old, as happy as only careless poverty can be : 
 
 *^ As bleak-fac'd Hallowmas returns, 
 Th°y get the jovial, ranting kirns, 
 Wlien rural life, o' ev'ry station. 
 Unite in common recreation ; 
 Love blinks. Wit siapg, an' social Mirth 
 Forgets there 's Care upo' the earth. 
 
 The canty auld folks crackin' cronse. 
 The yoiiUR aues rautin' thro* the house, — 
 My heart has been sae fain to pee them, 
 ThU I/or jot/ hue barkit wi' them," 
 
43 
 
 Here in one line lie!! the gem ; here is genias. The elements 
 have taken fire. That collie has a soul ; he is one of the 
 family, as the collie always U in the home of the Scotch 
 peasant. Every collie in the world has been elevated in sbcial 
 status since the pen of genius made him one of that joyous 
 throng. He sings his song, speaks his piece, dances with the 
 rest, and contributes his part to the general happiness. Talent 
 would probably have forgotten him altogether. It could never 
 have seen that the needed music to cap the joyous scene might 
 be invoked out of his bark. No ; that is just the one step, the 
 "little more" of Michael Angelo's definition of genius. 
 
 Two lines at the close of this poem call for notice. These 
 hairy philosophers sitting on the heather hills have told each 
 other much of the trials and disadvantages of life in the palace 
 and in the cottage ; for there are advantages and disadvantages 
 in both, though we have Marcus Aurelins's word for it, that 
 "life can be liv^d well even in a palace," The sun had set,, 
 the gloaming was coming on — 
 
 " When up they gat, and shook their iTIgs, 
 Rejoiced they wire na men but dugs " 
 
 There is no use in enlarging upon that last line. The reader 
 who does not feel it to be a stroke of genius can never be made 
 to see it. But who can fail to feel it? The poem ends with 
 it, and goes out in a blaze. The line crystallizes and passes 
 into literature as one of its gems. Genius, nothing but genius. 
 Burne, like Milton, always betrays an extraordinary partiality 
 for the devil. It would be difficult to illustrate genius better 
 than by quoting several lines from his address to that wicked 
 imp. One is tempted to quote several, but let ua take the last 
 verse only : 
 
 " But, fare you weel, auld NicTiie-beu ! 
 
 wad ye tak a thought an' men' I 
 Ye aiblius might — I diuua ken- 
 Still hae a stake — 
 
 1 'm wae to think upo' yon den, 
 
 E'en lor 5 our sake ! " ; 
 
 Talent, even of the highest order, would have stopped much 
 short of such a farewell. It might have tendered some good 
 advice, ponderously delivered. Genius alone could have sug- 
 gested the possible repentance and reformation of the very 
 spirit of evil ; and the suggestion is so delicately conveyed — 
 nothing of the preacher, no denunciation, just a friendly word 
 at parting. And so Burns takes leave of his Infernal Majesty 
 lovingly, anxious for his future improvement nnd happiness. 
 The poet would not do even Old Nick a bad turn ; he would do 
 him a goad turn if he could. The spark is in this line. The 
 glow of sympathy becomes all-pervading, sympathy with mis- 
 fortune in all its phases, and we feel that he " prayeth best 
 who " not only " loveth best all things, both great and small," 
 but all things, even evil things, loveth he so, that he prays, 
 their retilrn to the better path. 
 
The dying words of poor Maillie, the plowman's pet ewe, fur- 
 iiish several gems. The dying sheep gives advice to her lambs, 
 and two lines inculcate a lesson at least as valuable as any other 
 that can be given to lambs in the form of young men and women. 
 For those who eschew bad company are safe. 
 
 *^ But aye keep miod to moop an' mell 
 Wi' sheep o' credit like thyteV I " 
 
 The address closes with the four following lines : ' 
 
 *^ And now, my bairns, wi' my last breath, 
 I lea'e my blessin' wi' you baith : 
 A n' when you think «po' your inither^ 
 Mind to be kin' to ane anither." 
 
 A sermon in two lines for every family in the world. If there 
 be brothers and sisters at variance anywhere, who can with- 
 stand these lines and remain apart. Heaven help them ! Not 
 the note, this, which sets fire to the blood? ■ But genius has 
 another test not less searching than that of fire. The tear is 
 also her own. The gracious drops from the fount of sorrow 
 fall at her call. She alone ^trikes the bard heart with enchanted 
 spear, and softens all into the sacred rain of tears. 
 
 In the " Epistle to a Youug Friend," amidst much good 
 advice, we come to a stanzt that blazes in these days of higher 
 criticism and patching of human creeds which have too long 
 passed for divine ; 
 
 " The fear o' hell 's a h:ngman's whip 
 
 To hiud the wretch in order ; 
 But where ye feel your honor grip. 
 
 Let that aye be your border : 
 Its slightest touches, iustant pause — 
 
 Debar a' aide pretences ; 
 And resolutely keep its laws. 
 
 Uncaring coDseguences. " 
 
 This sentiment will meet with general acceptance to-day. That 
 Bains dared write it in his day is explicable only by tie law 
 that genius does what it must. 
 
 Matthew Arnold says that for dramatic force equal to that 
 displayed in " Tarn o' Shanter" and " The Jolly Beggars" we 
 mast look in the pages of Shakspere alone. The scene in 
 AUoway Kirk, with witches and warlocks in a dance, would 
 obviously have been incomplete without the presence of the 
 head spirit of the fraternity himself. But what part would 
 Old Nick play in such an entertainment ? To dance with the 
 others would scarcely have comported with his regal dignity ; 
 to stand apart would never do, for if there be any mischief 
 afoot, he certainly must be in it. Goethe makes Mephisto- 
 pheles draw the wine from the cask and put the sulphurous 
 fliiue in it — a proper part, no doubt; but these spirits of the 
 air neither eat nor drink, yet the devil must do something 
 amo ng them. Here is the stroke of genius : 
 
45 
 
 " At winnobtbunlier i' tho cost. 
 There eat Auld Nick, in sliape o' beast ; 
 A towzie tyke, black, grim, an' large. 
 To gie them music was hie charge ; 
 He acrew'd tbe pipes and gart them skirl, 
 Till roof amd rafters a' did dirl." 
 
 He gets at the very core of the whole matter. Withont music 
 no dance was possible, and Nannie could never have " lapped 
 and flang." Those who dance must pay the piper ; and when 
 Auld Nick himself sets the tune, as he often does, the devil 's 
 to pay indeed; his scale of charges knows no maximum, and 
 he is a sure collector. The next lines have a weird touch which 
 is hard indeed to equal. One line contains the searched-for 
 spark : 
 
 '* Cpffins stood round like open presses ; 
 
 That shaw'd the dead in their last dresses ; 
 
 And by some deev'lish cantraip slight 
 
 Each in its cauld hand held a light.". 
 
 The idea of ranging the dead in their cofSns around the ball- 
 room of these spirits of darkness in their orgy might possibly 
 have occurred to a clever poet; but what of the last touch? 
 The "little more" lies just here — the cold hand of corpses 
 made to serve as candlesticks to light the revels ! The element 
 of the awful is thus introduced with appalling power. What a 
 background for the picture ! Mirth and revelry — life at its 
 flood ; the living ringed in and lighted up by the dead I Tam 
 o' Shanter has too many of the sparks to be quoted fully — the 
 picture of Tam's home at the farm, for instance, when he was 
 reveling at night in Ayr : 
 
 *^ Whare sits onr sulky, sullen dame, 
 Gath'rin' her bro-ws like gath'rin' storm, 
 Nursin^ her wrath to keep it warm.'-^ 
 
 The finger goes at once upon the last line. Burns knew the 
 sex. Most wives are too good, sweet, tender, and self-sacrific- 
 ing to do more than make-believe when they rebuke. Their 
 wrath needs constant fuel, or down it all goes, perhaps too 
 soon. 
 
 In all that Burns has written there is nothing-finer than 
 " The Vision." He paints himself sitting in his hovel at night, 
 the very den of poverty — an "auld clay biggin" filled with 
 tormenting smoke. At last he falls asleep, and the " Genius 
 of Scotland" comes to him in a dream. From beginning to 
 end this is a poem filled with the brightest gems, rich in tbe 
 divine sparks of genius. Mark the description of Scotia's 
 Guardian Angel, who presides over the inspired natures who 
 have made that little land one of the largest domains in the 
 realm of the spirit, and the home of Poetry, Bomance, and 
 Song. 
 
 "The Vision" tells him to "preserve the dignity of man 
 with soul erect," and then follows the close. The highest test 
 of the poet is the manner in which he touches the supernatural. 
 
46 
 
 Men may easily call spirits from the vasty deep, but how to 
 use them so that we preserve our gravity is known to few. 
 Very few men, it is said, know how to take their departure 
 from a room becomingly. It has troubled many a viriter how 
 to dispose of his supernatural visitor, and prevent " exit 
 ^host " being followed by peals of laughter. What genius can 
 do is seen in Hamlet's " Bemember me " as he noiselessly glides 
 away. Banquo's exit with finger pointing to bloody throat is 
 magnificent. True sparks indeed, especially the latter ; but 
 even with that may we not rank this departure of ' ' The Vision " ? 
 
 *' * And wear thou this/ — Bhe solemn said 
 And bound the holly round my head ; 
 The polished leaves, and berries red, 
 
 Did mstllDg play ; 
 And, like a passing thought, eheJUd, 
 
 In light away." 
 
 How could that peasant plowman in his smoky den ever con- 
 ceive anything so exqni.sitely delicate as this ending I I know 
 nothing of the kind so perfect. One fondly lingers over — 
 
 '■ And, like a passing thought, she fled 
 In ii^ At away." 
 
 Two words, but a Koh-i-noor. Genius ! Inspiration ! 
 
 There is something splendid in this poor plowman greeting 
 himself, as a matter of course, as the inspired bard and placing 
 the holly upon his own royal head. Supreme genius does 
 know its powers and its heritage. Burns was indeed the Bard 
 of Scotland and the rightful king. Ko man has risen to dis- 
 pute his title to the crown. The holly still remains there, its 
 leaves greener and its berries rodder to-day than when bound 
 Around his head. 
 
 The address to the mouse has been often quoted, but not the 
 lines which to me contain the purest spark. Take the second 
 
 -stanza : 
 
 *' I 'm truly sorry man's dominion 
 Has broken Nature's social union, 
 An' justifies that ill opinion 
 
 Which makes thee startle 
 At me, thy poor eaith-t orn companion, 
 An^ fellow-mortal 1 " 
 
 Here is Darwinism for you. Talent could never have reached 
 ■down so far as to become " fellow-mortal " to a mouse. Or if 
 it might have condescendingly done this much, it never could 
 have elevated the poor little mouse to companionship with 
 man. It took genius to divine and so to announce in this 
 fashion that "all flesh is kin." 
 
 Here is an epitaph upon his friend and benefactor, Gavin 
 Hamilton, from whom Tresident Arthur was proud to claim 
 descent. I remember he corrected me one day when I spoke 
 of Gavin Hamilton. "Not G^aTO» Hamilton," said he. "You 
 ought to know better. He was one of my ancestors, and it 
 was always Gauin with my grandfather." 
 
47 
 
 ** The poor man weeps — here Gavin sleeps, 
 Whom canting vnretches blam'd ; 
 Sut with such fi8 he — where'er he 6tJ, 
 May 1 be sav'd or damn'd / " 
 
 We all know those in this world with whom we should be 
 willing to take our chances in the next, now that Burns hf.s 
 put the idea into our heads; but who else would have gone so 
 far as to print it for the iirst time ? 
 
 We have not j;et touched upon his songs. Take Bruce's 
 Address, which Carlyle has called " the war-hymn of the ages." 
 " The first stanza of ' Soots wha hae,' " said mediocrity, in the 
 person of Thompson, the publisher, " will never do ; no leader 
 would dare offer as an alternative to victory a gory bed to 
 troops he wished to encourage." Death has been hailed, tut 
 death seems vague in comparison, and carries with it the sug- 
 gestion of immediate passage to the abode of heroes. But 
 Burns knew better than his critic, and replied: "That line 
 must stand." And it stands for all time. 
 
 ** Welcome to your gory bed 
 Or to victory." 
 
 " Scotland's right " or the " gory bed," the last welcome if the 
 first fell. He stood for Scotland, body and soul, future or no 
 future, Walhalla or Annihilation — it mattered not. At that 
 supreme moment it was "Scotland forever !" 
 
 In that well-known song, "John Anderson, my jo," we have 
 the spark. Has any poet ever given in one verse such a picture 
 of the union of two hearts ns this ? 
 
 " Now we manu totter down, John, 
 But hand in hand we'll go ; 
 And Bleep thegith'ir at thefoot^ 
 John Anderson^ my jo." 
 
 Up the hill, down the hill, through life, through death ; " until 
 death us do part " is the vow of marriage ; but when true mar- 
 riage comes, death itself forces no separation. Through the 
 dark shadow ha^d in hand, — and this much for comfort and 
 content, — we shall "sleep thegither at the foot," certain as wo 
 lie down that there can be no heaven for one without the other, 
 and prepared for anything in the future so we share it together. 
 "To Mary in Heaven" seems not only so perfect, but so 
 sacred that one instinctively hesitates to quote from it. It is 
 the ideul lover's lament as clearly as "Scots wha hae ' is the 
 war song, or "Anld Lang Syne" the song of good fellowship, 
 or "A man's a man for a' that" the song of democracy. But 
 four lines I must quote, which follow the description of the 
 meeting on the banks of Ayr, which, " gurgling, kissed its peb- 
 bled shore " : 
 
 ** Still o'er these scenes my me m'ry wakes, 
 And fondly broods with miser care ! 
 Time but th' impression stronger makes. 
 As streams their channels deeper wear.^* 
 
48 
 
 What Burns Height have been had Mary lived to be his wife 
 opens the field of boundless conjecture. The. history of this 
 incomparable lament is fittingly touching. His wife tells that 
 the .poet not coming in at the usual evening bour she went in 
 search of him,' and found him lying on his back on a hayrick 
 gazing at the evening star, so absorbed that she did not disturb 
 bim. He came iu later, and going to his table, took pen and 
 wrote this lament. The rapid change of mood in Burns has 
 given rise to much surprise. Scott's devotion tp his first love, 
 whose sacred name he was discovered carving in Bunic charac- 
 ters when he was an old man, tells the tale in his case. This is 
 contrasted with the succession of favorites of Burns ; but he 
 too, though he sighed to many, loved but one. How sorry one 
 is for the woman who was his wife : in the heart of her husband 
 another sitsenthroned. And what a line is that first one of the 
 lament— six words of exquisite beauty, and such rhythm, shed- 
 ding around the kindly light of genius : 
 
 '* Tfiou ling'Hng star, with leaa^ning rap. 
 That lov'st to greet the early moru, 
 Again thou usher'st iu the day 
 My Maipy from my soul was torn." 
 
 Truly, " Who says he has loved has never loved at all." 
 And here comes "Holy Willie's Prayer." Bat this is no 
 spark, the torch of genius illuminates every verse. We cannot 
 ■pass it over altogether, and we might as well take the first 
 stanza as any other : 
 
 ** O thou, wha iu the heavens does dwell, 
 Wha, as it pleases best thysel'. 
 Sends ane to heaven, and ten to hell, 
 
 A' forth!/ glory. 
 And no for ony guid or ill 
 
 They've done afore thee !" 
 
 In the " Twa Herds" there is the spark — 
 
 " Then Orthodoxy yet may prance. 
 And Learning in a woodie dance. 
 And that feilcur ca'd' Common SenM, 
 
 ■ That bites sae sair. 
 Be banished o'er the sea to France : 
 Let him bark there." 
 
 Common sense does bite indeed ! 
 
 Matthew Arnold declares the " Jolly Beggars" the greatest 
 work Of Burns. Shakspere aloae, says he, has equaled it for 
 dramatic force. It is the veteran's turn to amuse the old tatter- 
 demalions, and he gives them a rollicking song indeed. 
 
 ** I lastly was with Onrtis, among the floating batt'ries, 
 . And there I left tdr .witness an arm and a limb. 
 Yet let my country need me. with Elliot to lead me, 
 Vd clatter on my stumps at the sound of a drum." 
 
 The one line again. If there be iu literature such a picture as 
 that suggested by the last line, I have not met with it. Did 
 
Mrs. THOS. BROWN, 
 
 GRANDDAUGHTER OF ROBERT BURNS. 
 
49 
 
 Burna painfully think that out ? Muse over it ? Labor away 
 at that part or this part of it ? Or did the idea flash upon him 
 like a stroke of lightning, and reveal that veteran moved to 
 dancing upon his stumps at the very sound of the drum ? I 
 believe it burst upon the poet at once, and that he was afraid 
 he might lose the flash before he could write it down. But we 
 must pass to the closing song which is sung as an encore by 
 the bard of the gang, after which the curtain falls. The first 
 and last verses I quote : 
 
 '* See ! the Bmoking bowl before U3, 
 Mark our jovial ragged ring ! 
 Bound and round take up the chorus, 
 And in raptures let us slog. 
 
 Ghobus. — 'M Jig for those by law protected ! 
 Liberty 's a glorioue feast ! 
 Courts for cowards were erected^ 
 Churches built to please the priest" 
 
 " Life is all a variorum. 
 
 We regard not how it goes : 
 Let them cant about decorum 
 Who have characters to lo&e. 
 
 ** Here 's to budgets, bags, and wallets 
 Here 's to all the wandering train ! 
 Here 's our ragged brats and callets ! 
 One and all cry out — Amen." 
 
 There is an amen chorus for you ! The most gloriously wild 
 rant in literature, as far as I know it, is this cantata. No 
 wonder it was not published until after the death of the poet. 
 If any man ever lived but Burns who could have written it, I 
 have not heard of him. If he never had written anything else 
 but this, he could never have been ignored as a poet. 
 
 In the next we strike my favorite of all songs. I confess that 
 with songs and tunes I am as fickle as Burns was with his fa- 
 vorite lassies ; one queen gives place to another with surprising 
 facility. Every summer spent on the moors among the heather 
 brings a new favorite. But there also comes a loyal return to 
 a former love now and then ; one that has reigned before and 
 been dethroned for a time is restored and reigns again. Though 
 not hereditary monarchs, these queens are eligible for reelec- 
 tion. Thus " My Nannie 's Awa' " has served more terms than 
 any, and is now again in the high oflSoe of Queen of Song. It 
 is a shame to quote only a part of it, because every line seems 
 a necessary step leading higher and higher until the region of 
 fire is entered ; but two verses must be singled out from this 
 prime favorite of the hour, as the highest crests where all is 
 mountainous. 
 
 ** The snaw-drop and primrose our woodlands adorn. 
 And violets bathe in the weet o' the morn ; 
 They pain tny sad bosom, sae sweetly they blaw. 
 Thy mind me o' Nannie — and Nannie 's awa'! 
 
50 
 
 " The lav'rock that springs frae the dews of the lawn, 
 The shepherd to warn o' the grey-breaking dawn. 
 And thon, mellow mavis, that hails the night fa', 
 Qive over /or pity — my Nannie 's awa' !" 
 
 Lying open before me on the opposite page comes the hymn 
 of Triumphant Democracy : 
 
 " The rank is but the guinea-stamp^ 
 The man s the gowd for a^ that P' 
 
 The last verse sends that hymn singing throughout the wOrld — 
 
 " Then let us pray that come it may — 
 As come it will for a' that — 
 That seuse and worth, o'er a' the tarth, 
 May bear the gree, and a' that. 
 
 Por a' that, and a' that, 
 
 Jt '« comin^ yet, for a' that. 
 That man to man, the world c^er, 
 
 ahalt brothers bef.r a' that .'" 
 
 This was before Tennyson sang of the Parliament of Man and 
 the Federation of the World. Burns, with the true insight of 
 the poet prophet, proclaims the brotherhood of man. 
 
 I cannot leave my favorite in an attitude more pleasing than 
 in singing the coming Brotherhood of Man. 
 
 Whether these jiages ever see the light or no, they have served 
 their purpose, for many a weary anxious hour has the search 
 for gems saved the writer, bringing to him something like calm , 
 and once more "the taste of elevated joys," which conies to the 
 tranquil mind. 
 
51 
 
 LORD ROSEBERY'S SPEECHES AT DUMFRIES 
 AND GLASGOW, JULY 21, 1896, ON THE OC- 
 CASION OF THE BURNS' CENTENARY CELE- 
 BRATION. 
 
 (By Special Permission.) 
 
 Egbert Burns : Scotland's best loved son and her 
 patriot bard was born at Allowav, on 25th Jan- 
 uary, 1759, and died on 21st July, 1 796. A brief thirty- 
 seven years, yet how much was crowded into their 
 little span. Joys and sorrows, triumphs and disap- 
 pointments, the consciousness of Heaven-given gen- 
 ius, the keen pangs of remorseful memories, yet all 
 these were needed to evoke that storm of feeling which 
 has made him not only the hero of Scottish hearts, but 
 the very sign and symbol of Scottish patriotism. 
 Little wonder then that the Centenary of the death of 
 Eobert Burns should have elicited a display of pride 
 and affection unequalled in the annals of any country 
 under the sun. For one day Scottish reserve de- 
 parted, as from every part of the globe came testi- 
 monies and tributes to the memory of Eobert -Bums. 
 
 At the Luncheon in the Mechanics' Hall, Dumfries, Lord Bose- 
 bery Delivered the Following Address. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : I come here as a loyal burgess of 
 Dumfries to do honor to the greatest burgess of Dumfries. 
 You, Mr. Provost, have laid upon me a great distinction, but 
 a great burden. Your most illustrious burgess obtained priv- 
 ileges for his children in respect to his burgess-ship, but 
 you impose on your youngest burgess an honor that might 
 well break anybody's back — that of attempting to do justice 
 in any shape or fashion to the hero of to-day's ceremony. 
 Well, -we citizens of Dumfries have a special claim to be 
 considered on this day. "We are surrounded by the choicest 
 and the most sacred haunts of the poet. You have in your 
 town the house in which he died, the Globe, where we could 
 have wished that some phonograph had then existed which 
 could have communicated to us some of his wise and witty 
 and wayward talk. You have the street commemorated in 
 M'OuUoch's tragical anecdote when Burns was shunned by 
 his former friends; and you have the paths by the Nith 
 
52 
 
 ■which are associated with some of his greatest works. Tou 
 have near you the room in which " the whistle " was contested 
 forj and in which, if some legend is to be trusted, the immor- 
 tal Dr. Gregory was summoned to administer his lirst powders 
 to the survivors of that memorable feast. You have the stack- 
 yard in which, lying on his back and contemplating 
 
 Thou ling'rinft star, with less'mng ray. 
 That lov'st to greet the early moru, 
 
 he wrote the lines "To Mary in Heaven," perhaps the most 
 l>athetio of his poems. You have near you the walk by the 
 river where, in his transport, he passed his wife and children 
 without seeing them, his brow flushed and his eyes thining 
 with the lustre of " Tam o' Shanter." "I wish you had seen 
 him," said his wife, "he was in such ecstasy that the tears 
 were happiug down his cheeks." That is why we are in Dum- 
 fries to-day; we come to honour Burns among these immortal 
 haunts of his. But it is not in Dumfries alone that he is com- 
 memorated to-day, for all Scotland will pay her tribute, 
 and that is surely hers of right. Mankind owes him a 
 general debt, but the debt of Scotland is a special one, 
 for Burns exalted our race ; he hallowed Scotland and 
 the Scottish tongue. Before his time we had been scarcely 
 recognized. We had been passing out of the recollec- 
 tion and recognition of the world. From the time of the 
 Union of the Crowns, and still more from the time of the legis- 
 lative union, Scotland had lapsed into obscurity. Except for 
 an occasional riot or a Jacobite rising, herexistence was almost 
 forgotten. She had indeed her Kobertsous and her Humes, 
 writing history to general admiration, but no trace of Scottish 
 authorship was discoverable in their works; indeed, every 
 flavour of national idiom was carefully obliterated. The Scot, 
 tish dialect, as Burns called it, was in danger of extinction ; 
 aud Burns seemed at this juncture to start to his feet and re- 
 assert Scotland's claim to a national existence. His Scottish 
 notes rang through the world ; he preserved the Scottish lan- 
 guage forever — for mankind will never allow to die that idiom 
 in which his poems and his songs are enshrined. This is a part 
 and only a part of Scotland's debt to Burns. But it is much 
 more than a Scottish demonstration, and therefore I will not 
 linger longer on Scotland's debt. It is a collection of represen- 
 tatives from all quarters of the globe to own the common alleg- 
 iance and the common faith. It is not only Scotsmen honour- 
 ing the greatest of Scotsmen — we are stretched to-day far be- 
 yond a kingdom or a nice. We are a sort of poetical Mohamme- 
 dans gathered in a sort of poetical Mecca. And yet, ladies and 
 gentlemen, we are assembled to-day in our high enthusiasm 
 under circumstances which are somewhat paradoxical, for with 
 all the appearance of joy we celebrate not a festival but a 
 tragedy. It is not the sunrise but the sunset that we eommem- 
 
53 
 
 orate. It is not the birth of a new power into the world, the 
 subtle germ of a fame that is to surTive and to inspire the 
 generations of men. Bat it is perhaps more fitting that we 
 celebrate the end and not the beginning. For the coming of 
 these figures is silent. It is their passing that we note. At 
 this instant that I speak, there may be born into the world the 
 equal of a Newton or a Caesar, but half of us will be dead before 
 he has revealed himself. Their death is different. It may be 
 gloomy and disastrous ; it may come at ii moment of shame 
 and neglect. But by their time the man has carved his name 
 somewhere in the temple of fame. There are exceptions, of 
 course, exceptions where the end comes before the slightest 
 or all but the slightest recognition — Ohatterton choking in his 
 garret ; hunger of body and soul all unsatisfied ; Millet selling 
 his pictures for a song; nay Shakespeare himself. But as a 
 rule death in the case of genius closes the first act of a public 
 drama. Criticism and honours may then begin their unbiassed 
 work free from jealousy or friendship or personal consideration 
 for the beginning. Then comes the third act, if a third act there 
 be. No, it is a death, not a birth, that we celebrate to-day. 
 This day a century ago, in poverty, and delirium, and distress 
 there was passing the soul of Robert Burns. To him death 
 comes in clouds and darkness — the end of a long agony of body 
 and soul. He is harassed with debt ; his bodily constitution 
 is ruined ; his spirit is broken ; his wife is daily expecting her 
 confinement; he has lost almost all that rendered his life 
 happy, much of friendship, credit, and esteem. Some score 
 of years before, one of the most charming of English writers, 
 as he lay dying, was asked if his mind was at ease, and with 
 his last breath Oliver Goldsmith owned that it was not. So 
 it was with Robert Burns. His delirium dwelt on the horrors 
 of a juil. He uttered curses on the tradesmen who had pur- 
 sued him for debt. " What business " said he to his phy- 
 sician, in a moment of consciousness, "what business has a 
 phytician to waste his time on me ? I am a, poor pigeon not 
 worth plucking. Alas ! I have not feathers enough on me to 
 carry me to my grave." For a year or more his health had been 
 failing. For he had a poet's body as well as a poet's mind — ner- 
 vous, feverish, and impressionable ; and his constitution, which, 
 if nurtured and regulated might have carried him to the limit 
 of lite, was undermined by the storm and stress of his disap- 
 pointment and a, preying mind. In the previous autumn he 
 had been seized with a rheumatic attack. His digestion had 
 i^iven way. He was sinking in melancholy and gloom. Id his 
 last April he wrote to his friend Thomson — " By Babel's 
 streams I have sat and wept almost ever since I saw you last. 
 I have only known existence by the pressure of the heavy hand 
 of sickness, and have counted time by the repercussions of 
 pain. Rheumatism, cold, and fever have formed to me a ter- 
 rible combination. I close my eyes in misery and open them 
 
54 
 
 without hope." It was thought to revive him by sea-bathing, 
 and he was sent to the Brow Well. There he remained for three 
 weeks. He was under no delusion as to his state. " Well, 
 madam," he said to Mrs. Riddell, on arriving, " have you any 
 commands for the other world 1" He sat that evening with his 
 old friend and spoke manfully of his approaching death, of the 
 fate of his children, and his fame, sometimes indulging in bit- 
 ter-sweet pleasantry, but never losing the consciousness of his 
 condition. After three weeks he wearied of the fruitless bunt 
 for death, and he returned home to die. He was only just in 
 time. When he reached his house on the eighteenth he could 
 no longer stand. He was soon delirious ; in three days he was 
 dead. On the fourth day we are told that his attendant held 
 a cordial to his lips. He swallowed it greedily, raised himself 
 almost wholly up, spread out his hands, sprang forward, nigh 
 the whole length of the bed, fell on his face and expired. I 
 suppose there are many who can read the account of these last 
 months with composure. They are more fortunate than I. 
 There is nothing much more melancholy in all biography. The 
 brilliant poet, the delight of all society, from the highest to the 
 lowest, sits brooding in silence over the drama of his spent 
 life — the unseen home, the plough and the savour of fresh- 
 turned earth, the silent communion with Nature and his own 
 heart, the brief hours of splendour, the dark hour of anguish, 
 the mad struggle for forgetfulness, the bitterness of vanished 
 homage, the gnawing doubt of failure, the distressing future of 
 his wife and children, the endless witch dance without clue or 
 remedy— all preplexing, all soon to end while he is yet young, 
 as men count youth. Though none know so well as he that 
 his youth is gone, his race is run, his message is fulfilled. His 
 death revived the flagging interest which had been felt in him. 
 As usual, men began to realize what they had lost when it was 
 too late. When it was known that he was dying, his towns- 
 men had shewn great anxiety and distress. One man was heard 
 to say with a touch of quaint simplicity, "Who do you think 
 will be our poet now ?" The district set itself to prepare a public 
 funeral for the poet who had died almost penniless among 
 them ; a vast concourse followed him to his grave ; the "awk- 
 ward squad," as he had foreseen and deprecated, fired a volley 
 over his grave ; the streets were lined with soldiers, and among 
 them one who sixteen years later was to be Prime Minister ; 
 ■ and while the procession wended its gloomy way, as if no ele- 
 ment of tragedy were to be awanting to the scene, his widow's 
 hour of travail arose, and she gave birth to the hapless child 
 who had caused his father so much misgiving. In this place 
 and on this day it all seems present to us — the house of anguish, 
 the thronged churchyard, the weeping mourners. We feel our- 
 selves part of the lamenting crowd ; we hear those dropping 
 volleys and that mufBed drum. We bow our heads as the coffin 
 j^asses and acknowledge with tears the inevitable doom. Pass, 
 
55 
 
 heavy hearse, with thy weary freight of shattered hopes and 
 exhausted frame ; pass with that simple pomp of fatherless 
 bairns and sad moralising friends ; pass with the sting of death 
 to the victory of the grave ; pass with the perishable and leave 
 us the eternal. It is rare to be fortunate in life ; it is infinitely 
 rarer to be fortunate in death. Happy in the occasion of his 
 death, as Tacitus says of Agricola, is not a common epitaph. 
 It is comparatively easy to know how to live, but it is beyond 
 all option and choice to compass the more difficult art of loiow- 
 ing how and when to die. We can generally, in looking back, 
 choose a moment in a man's life when he had been fortunate if 
 he had dropped down dead. And so the question arises natur- 
 ally to-day, was Burns fortunate in his death — the death which 
 we commemorate? There can, I fancy, be only one answer. 
 It was well that he died when he did. It might even have been 
 better for himself if he had died a little earlier. The terrible 
 lines that he wrote two years earlier to Mrs. Eiddell and Mr. 
 Cunningham betoken a spirit mortally wounded. In those last 
 two years the cloud settles never to be lifted. " My constitu- 
 tion and frame," he says, " were aboriginally blasted with the 
 deep incurable taint of hypochondria, which poisons my ex- 
 istence." He found, perhaps, some pleasure in the.composition 
 of his songs, some occasional relief in the society of boon com- 
 panions ; but the world was fading before him. There is an 
 awful expression in Scotland, which one never hears without a 
 pang — Such and such a one " is done," meaning that he is 
 physically worn out. Burns was " done." He was straggling 
 on like a poor wounded deer to his grave. He had often faced 
 the end not unwillingly. " Can it be possible," he once wrote- 
 to Mrs. Dnnlop, " that when I resign this frail, feverish being, 
 I shall find myself in conscious existence ? When the last 
 gasp of agony has announced that I am no more to those who 
 know me and the few who love me ; when the cold, unconscious 
 corpse is resigned to the earth, to be the prey of reptiles and 
 become a trodden clod, shall I yet be warm in life, enjoying or 
 enjoyed ?" Surely that reads as if he foresaw our meeting here 
 to-day and would fain be with us. And, indeed, for all we know 
 he may be. Twelve years before he had faced death in^a less 
 morbid spirit. Why, he asked — 
 
 Why am I loath to leave this earthly scene? 
 
 Have I so found it full of pleasing charms ? 
 Some drops of joy, with draughts of ill between. 
 
 Some gleams of sunshine 'mid renewing storms ! 
 
 He had perhaps never enjoyed life so much as is generally 
 supposed, though he had turned to it a brave, cheerful, un- 
 flinching face ; and his last years had been years of misery. 
 " God have mercy on me," he wrote, years before the end, " a 
 poor, damned, uncautious, duped, unfortunate fool: the sport 
 and miserable victim of rebellious pride, hypochondriac imagi- 
 nation, and Bedlam passions ! " There was truth in this out- 
 
56 
 
 burst ; at any rate his most devoted friends — and to be an 
 admirer of Burns is to be his friend — at any rate his most 
 devoted friends might wish that he had not lived to write the 
 letter to Mr. Clark, piteously pleading that a harmless toast 
 might not be visited too hard upon him ; or that to Mrs. 
 Riddell : "I write you from the regions of hell and the terrors 
 of the damned ; " or to be harried as a political suspect by his 
 official superiors and shunned by his acquaintances for the 
 same reason — walking like a ghost in Dumfries, neglected and 
 ignored. "That's all over now, my young friend," he said, 
 referring to the attitude towards him of Dumfries society — 
 "Were not my heart light I would dee." That was in 1794. 
 Had he died then it might have been happier for himself ; and 
 we might have lost some parts of his life that we would rather 
 fbrget. But posterity could not have spared him. "We could 
 not have spared the songs which belong to these years; and 
 above all, that supreme creed which he bequeathed to the 
 world — "A man's a man for a' that," would have remained aa- 
 delivered. One might, perhaps, go further and say that — 
 piteous a,s it is — whom the gods love should die young. This 
 is a hard saying, but it will not greatly affect the bills of mor- 
 tality — and it applies only to poets of the first rank, while even 
 Here it has its exceptions, and illustrious exceptions they have 
 been. But surely the best poetry is produced before middle 
 age — before the morning and its illusions have faded, J)efore 
 the heaviness of noon and the baneful chill of evening." Few 
 men can bear the strain of a poet's temperament through many 
 years. At any rate, we may feel sure of this, that Burns had 
 produced his best — that he could never again have produced a 
 "Tarn o' Shanter," or a "Cottar's Saturday Night," or a 
 " Jolly Beggai's." And though long before his death he could 
 still write lines affluent with tenderness and grace, the hand of 
 pain and hate and care, to use his own words, had lain heavily 
 upon him. And this leads to another point. To-day is not 
 merely the melancholy anniversary of death, but the real and 
 incomparable fulfilment cf prophecy. For this is the moment 
 to which Burns looked forward when he said to his wife ' ' Don't 
 be afraid. I'll be more respected a hundred years after I nm 
 dead than I am at present." To-day the hundred years are 
 completed and we can judge of the prediction. On that point 
 we must all be unanimous. Burns had honor in his life-time, 
 but his fame has rolled like a snow-ball sinbe his death, and it 
 rolls on yet. There is indeed no parallel to it in the world. It 
 sets the calculations of compound interest at defiance. It is 
 not merely the watchword of a nation that carries and implants 
 Burns worship all over the globe as birds carry seeds, but he 
 has become the champion and the patron saint of democracy — 
 he bears aloft the banner of the essential equality of man. His 
 birthday is celebrated a hundred and thirty-seven years after 
 its occurrence more universally than that of any other human 
 
57 
 
 being. He reigns over a greater dominion than any empire 
 that the world has ever seen. Neither does the ardor of his 
 devotees decrease. Ellisland, Mauchline and Dumfries are still 
 shrines of countless pilgrims. Burns statues are a hardy annual. 
 Burns clubs spring up like mushrooms after rain. The editions 
 of Burns are as the sands of the sea. The production of Burns 
 manuscripts was a lucrative branch of industry until it was 
 checked by the untimely interference of the law. No canon- 
 ized name in the calendar excites such blind and enthusiastic 
 adoration. Whatever Burns may have contemplated in the 
 most daring flight of his imagination, whatever dream he may 
 have fondled in the wildest moments of his elation, must have 
 fallen utterly short of the reality, as we know it to-day. And 
 it is all spontaneous. There is no puff, no advertisement, no 
 maopulation. Intellectual cosmetics of that kind are frail and 
 fugitive. They rarely survive their subject— they would not 
 have availed here. Nor is there any special glamor attached to 
 the poet— rather the reverse. He stood by himself, he has 
 grown by himself, it is himself and no other that we honor. 
 But what had Burns in his mind when he made his prediction ? 
 It might be whimsically urged that he was conscious that the 
 world had not yet seen his master-piece, for the "Jolly Beg- 
 gars " was not published until some time after his death. But 
 that would not have been suflSoient, for he had probably for- 
 gotten its existence. Nor do I think he spoke at haphazard. 
 What was probably present to his mind were the fickleness of 
 his contemporaries towards him, his conviction of the essential 
 excellence of his work, the consciousness that the excesses of 
 his later years had unjustly obscured him, and that his true 
 figure would be preserved as these fell into forgetfulness, or 
 were measured by their true value. If so, he was right in his 
 judgment, for his true life began with his death. With the poet 
 passed all that was gross or impure ; the clear spirit stood re- 
 vealed, and soared at once to its accepted place among the fixed 
 stars in the firmament of the rare immortals. 
 Lord Eosebery then resumed his seat amid loud cheering. 
 
 LORD ROSEBERY AT GLASGOW. 
 
 At a Public Meeting in, the evening in St. Andrew's Halls, Glas- 
 gow, Lord Rosebery delivered the followinq address. 
 
 L.ipiES AND Gentlemen : It is a great pleasure to find myself 
 in this hall on a non-political occasion. We are here to-day to 
 celebrate Burns. What the direct connection of Burns with 
 Glasgow is, I arp not exactly sure ; but, at any rate, I am confi- 
 dent of this, that in tho great metropolis of the West, there is a 
 clear claim that we should celebrate tho genius ot Eobert Burns. 
 I have celebrated it already elsewhere. I cannot, perhaps, deny 
 that the day has been a day of labor, but it has been a labor of 
 
58 
 
 love. It is, and it must be, a source of joy and pride to us to 
 see our champion Scotsman receive the honor and admiration 
 and affection of humanity ; to see, as I have seen this morning, 
 the long processions biinging homage and tribute to the con- 
 quering dead. But these have only been signs and symptoms 
 of the world-wide passion of reverence and devotion. That 
 generous and immortal soul pervades the universe to-day. In 
 the humming city and in the crowd of man ; in the backwood 
 and in the swamp ; where the sentinel paces the bleak frontier, 
 and where the sailor smokes his evening pipe; and, above all, 
 where the farmer and his men pursue their summer toil, whethei 
 'under the Stars and ^Stripes or under the Union Jack — the 
 thought and sympathy of men are directed to Kobert Burns. 
 I have sometimes asked myself if a roll-call of fame were read 
 over at the beginning of every century, how many men of emi- 
 nence would answer a second time to their names. But of our 
 . poet there is no doubt or question. The "adsum" of Burns 
 Tings out clear and unchallenged. There are few before him 
 on the list, and we cannot now conceive a .list without him. 
 He towers high, and yet he lived in an age when the average 
 ■was sublime. It sometimes seems to me as if the whole eigh- 
 teenth century was a constant preparation for, a constant work- 
 ing up to, the great drama of the revolution which closed it. 
 The scenery is all complete when the time arrives — the dark, 
 volcanic country; the hungry, desperate people; the fire-fly 
 nobles; the concentrated splendour of the court; in the 
 midst, in her place as heroine, the dazzling Queen. And dur- 
 ing long previous years, brooding nature has been producing 
 not merely the immediate actors, but figures worthy of the 
 scene. Whut a glittering procession it is! We can only mark 
 some of the principal figures. Burke leads the way by se- 
 niority; then come Fox and Goethe; Nelson and Mozart; 
 Schiller, Pitt, and Burns; Wellington and Napoleon. And 
 among these Titans, Burns is a conspicuous figure ; the figure 
 which appeals most of all to the imagination and affection of 
 mankind. Napoleon perhaps looms larger to the imagination, 
 but on the affection he has no hold. It is in the combination of 
 the two powers that Burns is supreme. What is his secret? 
 We are always discussing him and endeavouring to find it out. 
 Perhaps, like the latent virtue of some medical baths, it may 
 never be satisfactorily. explained. But, at any rate, let us dis- 
 cuss him again. That is, I presume, our object to-night. What 
 pleasanter or more familiar occupation can there be for Scots- 
 men ? But the Scotsmen who enjoy it have generally perhaps 
 hiore time than I. Pardon then the imperfections of my 
 speech, for I speak of a subject which no man can altogether 
 •compass, and which a busy man has perhaps no right to at- 
 tempt. The clue to Burns's extraordinary hold on mankind is 
 possibly a complicated one ; it has, perhaps, many develop- 
 ments. If so, we have not time to consider it to-night. But 
 
59 
 
 I personally believe the causes are, like most great causes, 
 simple ; though it might take long to point out all the ways in 
 which they opi rate. The secret, as it seems to me, lies in two 
 words — inspiration and sympathy. But, if I wished to prove 
 my contention, I should go on quoting from his poems all 
 night, and his admirers would still declare that I had omitted 
 the best passages. I know that profuse quotation is a familiar 
 form of a Burns speech, but I am afraid to begin lest I should 
 not end, and I am sure I should not satisfy. I must proceed, 
 then, in a more summary way. Now, ladies and gentlemen, 
 there seems to me to be two great natural forces in British lit- 
 erature — I use the safe adjpctive of British. I use it partly be- 
 cause hardly any of Burns's poetry is strictly English, partly 
 because he hated and was, perhaps, the first to protest against 
 the use of the word English as including Scottish — well, I say, 
 there are in that literature two great forces of which the power 
 seems sheer inspiration and nothing else — I mean Shakespeare 
 and Burns. This is not the place or the time to speak of that 
 miracle called Shakespeare, but one must say a word of the 
 miracle called Burns. Try and reconstruct Burns as he was. 
 A peasant, born in a cottage that no sanitary inspector in these 
 days would tolerate for a moment — struggling with desperate 
 effort against pauperism almost in vain ; snatching at scraps 
 of learning ju the intervals of toil, as it were with his teeth ; 
 a heavy, silent lad, proud of his jjloughing. All of a sudden, 
 without preface or warning, he breaks out into exquisite song 
 like a nightingale from the brushwood, and continues singing 
 as sweetly, with nightingale pauses, till he dies. A nightin- 
 gale sings because he cannot help it; he can only sing exquis- 
 itely because he knows no other. So it was with Burns. What 
 is this but inspiration ? One can no more measure or reason 
 about it than measure or reason about Niagara. And remem- 
 ber, ladies and gentlemen, the poetry is only a fragment of 
 Burns. Amazing as it may seem, all contemporary testimony 
 is unanimous that the man was far more wonderful than his 
 works. "It will be the misfortune of Burns' reputation," 
 writes an accomplished lady, who might well have judged him 
 harshly, "in the records of literature, not only to future gen- 
 erations and to foreign countries, but even with his native 
 Scotland and a number of his contemporaries, that he has been 
 regarded as a poet and nothing but a poet. * * * Poetry," 
 she continues, " (I appeal to all who had the advantage of be- 
 ing personally acquainted with him) was actually not his fo7-te. 
 * * * None, certainly, ever outshone Burns in the charms 
 ^the sorcery I would almost call it— of fascinating conversa- 
 tion, the spontaneous eloquence of social argument, or the un- 
 studied poignancy of brilliant repartee." And she goes on to 
 describe the almost superhuman fascination of his voice and of 
 h's eyes, those balls of black fire which electrified all on whom 
 they rested. It seems strange to be told that it would be an 
 
60 
 
 injnstioe to judge Burns by his poetry alone; but as to the 
 magnetism of his presence and conversation there is only one 
 verdict. "No man's conversation ever carried me so com- 
 pletely off my feet," said the Duchess of Gordon— the friend 
 of Pitt and of the London wits, the queen of Scottish society. 
 Dugald Stewart says that "all the faculties of Burns' mind 
 were, so far as I could judge, equally vigorous, and his predi- 
 lection for poetry was rather the result of his own enthusiastic 
 iind impassioned temper, than of a genius exclusively adapted 
 to that species of composition. From his conversation I should 
 have pronounced him to be fitted to excel in whatever walk of 
 ambition he had chosen to exert his abilities." And of his 
 prose compositions the same severe judge speaks thus : " Their 
 great and varied excellencies render some of them scarcely 
 less objects of wonder than his poetical performances." The 
 late Dr. Eobertson used to say that, "considering his educa- 
 tion, the former seemed to him the more remarkable of (he 
 two." " I think Burns," said Principal Kobertson to a friend, 
 "was one of the most extraordinary men I ever met with. 
 His poetry surprised me very much, his prose surprised me 
 still more, and his conversation surprised me more than both 
 his poetry and prose." "We are told, too, that "he felt a 
 strong call towards oratory, and all who heard him speak— aud 
 some of them were excellent judges — admitted his wonderful 
 quickness of apprehension and readiness of t loquence." All this 
 seems to me marvellous. It surely ratifies the claim of inspi- 
 ration without the necessity of quoting a line of his poetiy. 
 I pass then to his sympathy. If his talents were universal his 
 sympathy was not less so. His tenderness was not a mere sel- 
 fish tenderness for his own family, for he loved all mankibd 
 except the cruel and the base. Nay, we may go further and 
 say that he placed all creation, especially the suffering and 
 despised part of it, under his protection. The oppressor in 
 every shape, even in the comparatively innocent embodiment 
 of the factor and the sportsman, he regarded with direct and 
 personal hostility. But above all he saw the charm of the home ; 
 he recognized it as the basis of all society, he honored it in 
 its humblest form, for he knew, as few know, how unpreten- 
 tiously, but how sincerely, the family in the cottage is welded 
 by mutual love and esteem. " I recollect once," said Dugald 
 Stewart, speaking of Burns, " he told me, when I was admir- 
 ing a distant prospect in one of our morning walks, that the sight 
 of so many smoking cottages gave a pleasure to his mind which 
 none could understand, who had not witnessed, like himself, 
 ■the happiness and worth which they contained." He dwells 
 repeatedly on the primary sacredness of the home and the 
 family, the responsibility of fHtherhood and marriage. " Have 
 I not," he once wrote to Lord Mar, " a more precious stake in 
 my country's welfare than the richest dukedom in it? I have 
 a large family of children and the prospect of many more." 
 
61 
 
 The lines in which be tells his faith are not less memorable 
 than the stately stanzas in which Gray sings the ' ' short and 
 simple annals of the poor." I must quote them again, often 
 •quoted as they are : 
 
 To raak' a happy fireside clime 
 
 To weans and wife, 
 That's the true pathos and sublime 
 
 Cf human Ufe. 
 
 His verses then go straight to the heart of every home ;"they ap- 
 peal to every father and mother. But that is only the begin- 
 ning, perhaps the foundation, of his sympathy. There is some- 
 thing for everybody in Burns. He has a heart even for vermin ; 
 he has pity even for the arch-enemy of mankind. And his uni- 
 versality makes his poems a treasure-house in which all may 
 £nd what they want. Every wayfarer in the journey of life 
 may pluck strength and 'courage from it as he passes. The 
 sore, the weary, the wounded, will all find something to heal 
 and soothe. For this great master is the universal Samaritan. 
 Where the priest and the Levite may have passed by in vain, 
 this eternal heart will still afford a resource. But he is not only 
 for the sick in spirit. The friend, the lover, the patriot, will 
 all find their choicest refreshment in Burns. His touch is every- 
 where, and it is everywhere the touch of genius. Nothing 
 ■comes amiss to him. What was said of the debating power of 
 iis eminent contemporary, Dundas, may be said of his poetry — 
 " He went out in all weathers." And it may be added that all 
 weathers suited him ; that he always brought sometLing prec- 
 ious, something we cherish, something that cannot die. He is, 
 then, I think, the universal friend in an unique sense. But he 
 was, poetically speaking, the special friend of Scotland, in a 
 sense which recalls a profound remark of another eminent 
 Scotsman, I mean Fletcher of Saltoun. In an account of a 
 conversation between Lord Cromarty, Sir Edward Seymour, and 
 Sir Christopher Musgrave, Fletcher writes: "I said I knew a 
 very wise man, so much of Sir Christopher's sentiment, that 
 he believed if a man were permitted to make all the ballads he 
 need not care who should make the laws of a nation." This 
 may be rudely paraphrased, that it is more important to make 
 the songs of a nation than to frame' its laws, and this again may 
 be interpreted that in former days, at any rate in the days of 
 Fletcher, even to the clays of Burns, it is the familiar songs of 
 a people that mould their thoughts, their manners, and their 
 morals. If this be true can we exaggerate the debt that we Scots- 
 men owe toBurns? He has bequeathed to his country the most 
 exquisite casket of songs in the world — primarily to his country, 
 but others cannot be denied their share. I will give only one ex- 
 ample, but that is a signal one. From distant Eoumania the 
 Queen of that country wrote to Dumfries to-day— that she has 
 no copy of Burns with her, but that she knows his songs by 
 heart. We must remember that there is more than this to be 
 
62 
 
 said. Many of Burns' songs were already in existence in the 
 lips and minds oE.the people — rough and coarse and obscene. 
 Our benefactor takes tliem, and with a touch of inspired 
 alchemy transmutes them and leaves them pure gold. He 
 loved ihe old catches and the old tunes and into these gracious 
 moulds he poured his exquisite gifts of thought and expression. 
 But for him those ancient airs, often wedded to words which no 
 decent man could recite, would have perished from that cor- 
 ruption if not. from neglect. He rescued them for us by his 
 songs, and in doing so he hallowed the life and sweetened 
 the breath of Scotland. I have also used the words patriot 
 and lover. These draw me to different lines of thought. 
 The word ' ' patriot " leads me to the political side of Burns. 
 There is no doubt he was suspected of being a politician — and he 
 is even said to have sometimes wished to enter Parliament. That 
 was perhaps an excusable aberration, and my old friend Pro- 
 fessor Masson has, I think, surmised that had he lived he might 
 have been a great Liberal pressman. My frail thought shall 
 not dally with such surmise, but it conducts us naturally to 
 the subject of Barns's politics. From his sympathy for his 
 own class, from his indignation against nobles like the Suke 
 of Queonsberry, and from the toasts that cost him so dear, it 
 might be considered easy to infer his political opinions. But 
 Burns should not be claimed for any party. A poet, be it re- 
 membered, is never a politician, and a politician is never a 
 poet — that is to say, that a politician is never so fortunate as 
 to be a poet, and a poet is so fortunate as never to be a poli- 
 tician. I do not say that the line of demarcation is never 
 passed — a politician may have risen for a moment, or a poet 
 may have descended, but where there is any confusion between 
 the two callings, it is generally because the poet thinks he dis- 
 cerns, or the politician thinks he needs, something higher than 
 politics. Burns's politics were entirely governed by the imag- 
 ination. He was at once a Jacobite and a Jacobin. He had 
 the sad sympathy which most of us have felt for the hapless 
 house of Stuart, without the least wish to be governed by it. 
 He had much the same sort of abstract sympathy with the 
 French Kevolution, when it was setting all Europe to rights ; 
 but he was prepared to lay. down his life to prevent its putting 
 this island to rights. And then came his official superiors of 
 the Excise, who, notwithstanding Mr. Pitt's admiration of his 
 poetry, snuffed out his politics without remorse. The name of 
 Pitt leads me to add that Burns had some sort of relation with 
 three prime ministers. Colonel Jenkinson of the Cinque Ports 
 Fencible Cavalry — afterwards minister for fifteen years under 
 the title of Liverpool — was on duty at Burns's funeral, though 
 we are told — the good man — that he disapproved of the poet, 
 and declined to make his acquaintance. Pitt, again, passed on 
 Burns one of his rare and competent literary judgments, so 
 eulogistic, indeed, that one wonders that a powerful minister 
 
63 
 
 conld have allowed one whom he admired so much to exist on 
 an exciseman's pay when well, and an exciseman's half pay 
 when dying. And from Addington, another prime minister, 
 Burns elicited a sonnet, which, in the Academy of Lagado, 
 would surely have been held a signal triumph of the ait of ex- 
 tracting sunshine from cucumbers. So much for politics in 
 the party sense. "A man's a man for a' that" is not politics, 
 it is the assertion of the rights of humanity in a sense far 
 wider than politics. It erects all mankind, it is the charter of 
 its self-respect. It binds, it heals, it revives, it invigorates ; it 
 sets the bruised and broken on their legs, it refreshes the 
 stricken soul, it is the salve and tonic of character; it eaunot 
 be narrowed into politics. Burns's politics are indeed nothing 
 but the occasional overflow of his human sympathy into past 
 history and current events. And now, having discussed the 
 two trains of thought suggested by the words "friend" and 
 ' ' patriot," I come to the more dangerous word " lover." There 
 is an eternal controversy which, it appears, no didactic oil will 
 ever assuage, as to Burns's private life and morality. Some 
 maintain that these have nothing to do with his poems ; some 
 maintain that liis life must be read into his works, and here 
 again some think that his life damns his poems, while others 
 aver that his poems cannot be fully appreciated without his 
 life. Another school thinks that his vices have been exag- 
 gerated, while their opponents scarcely think such exaggera- 
 tion possible. It is impossible to avoid taking a side. I walk 
 on the ashes knowing the fire beneath, and unable to avoid 
 them, for the topic is inevitable. I must confess myself, then, 
 one of those who think that the life of Burns doubles the 
 interest of his poems, and I doubt whether the failings of his 
 life have been much exaggerated, for contemporary testimony 
 on that point is strong, though a high and excellent authority, 
 Mr. Wallace, has recently taken the other side with much 
 power and point. But the life of Burns which I love to read 
 with his poems, does not consist in his vices ; they lie outside 
 it. It is a life of work, and truth, and tenderness. And though, 
 like all lives, it has its light and shade, remember that we 
 know it all, the worst as well as the best. His was a soul 
 bathed in crystal; he hurried to avow everything. There 
 was no reticence in him. The only obscure passage in 
 his life is the love passage with Highland Mary, and as to 
 that he was silent not from shame, but because it was a 
 sealed and sacred episode. "What a flattering idea," he once 
 wrote, "is a world to come! There shall I with speechless 
 agony of rapture again recognize my lost, my ever dear Mary! 
 whose bosom was fraught with truth, honour, constancy and 
 love." But he had, as the French say, the defects of his 
 qualities. His imagination was a supreme and celestial gift. 
 But his imagination often led him wrong, and never more 
 than with women. The chivalry that made Don Quixote see 
 the heroic in all the common events of life made Burns as (his 
 
64 
 
 Tjrother tells via) see a goddess in every girl that he approached. 
 Hence many love affairs, and some guilty ones ; but even these 
 must be judged with reference to time and circumstance. 
 This much it is certain, had he been devoid of genius they 
 would not have attracted attention. It is Burns's pedestal 
 that affords a target. And why, one may ask, is not the same 
 measure meted out to Burns as to others ? The illegitimate 
 children of great captains and statesmen and princes are treated 
 as historical and ornamental incidents. They stmt the scene 
 of Shakespeare, and ruff it with the best. It is for the illegiti- 
 mate children of Burns, though he and his wife cherished 
 them as if born in wedlock, that the vials of wrath are re- 
 served. Take two brilliant figures, both descended from 
 Stuarts, who were alive during Burns's life. We occupy our- 
 selves endlessly and severely with the offences of Burns. We 
 heave an elegant sigh over the kindred lapses of Charles 
 James Fox and Charles Edward Stuart. Again, it is quite clear 
 that, though exceptionally sober in his earlier years, he drank 
 too much in later life. But this, it must be remembered, was 
 but an occasional condescendence to the vice and habit of the 
 age. The gentry who pressed him to their houses, and who 
 were all convivial, have much to answer for. His admirers 
 who thronged to see him, and who could only conveniently sit 
 with him in a tavern, are also responsible for this habit, so 
 perilously attractive to men of genius. From the decorous 
 Addison, and the brilliant Bolingbroke onward, the eighteenth 
 century records hard drinking as the common incident of in- 
 tellectual eminence. To a man who had shone supreme in the 
 most glowing society, and who was now an exciseman in a 
 country town, with a home that cannot have been very exhila- 
 rating, and with a nervous system highly strung, the tempta- 
 tion of the warm tavern, and the admiring circle there, may 
 have almost been irresistible. Some attempt to say that his in- 
 temperance was exaggerated, I neither affirm nor deny. It 
 was not as a sot he drank ; that no one insinuated ; if he suc- 
 cumbed it was to good fellowship. Kemember, I do not seek 
 to palliate or excuse, and, indeed, none will be turned to dis- 
 sipation by Burns's example ; he paid too dearly for it. But 
 I will say this, that it all seems infinitely little, infinitely re- 
 mote, why do we strain, at this distance, to discern this dim 
 spot on the poet's mantle ? Shakespeare and Ben Jonson 
 took their cool tankard at the Mermaid ; we cannot afford, in 
 the strictest view of literary responsibility, to quarrel with them 
 for that. When we consider Pitt and G-oethe we do not con- 
 centrate our vision on Pitt's bottles of port or Goethe's bottles 
 of Moselle. Then why, we ask, is there such a chasm between 
 the Mermaid and the Globe, and why are the vintages of Wim- 
 bledon and Weimar so much more innocent than the simple 
 punch bowl of Inveraray marble and its contents ? I should 
 like to go a step further and affirm that we have something to 
 be grateful for even in the weakness of men like Burns. Man- 
 kind is helped in its progress almost as much by the study of 
 
65 
 
 imperfection as by the contemplation of perfection. Had we 
 nothing before us in our futile and halting lives but saints and 
 the ideal, we might well fail altogether. We grope blindly 
 along the catacombs of the world, we climb the dark ladder of 
 life, we feel our way to futurity, but we can scarcely see an 
 inch around or before us. We ttumble and fa ter and fall, 
 our hands and knees are bruised sore, and we look up for light 
 and guidance. Could we see nothing but distant, unapproach- 
 able impeccability, we might well sink prostrate in tlie hope- 
 lessness of emulation and the weariness of despair. Is it not 
 then, when all seems blank and lighlless and lifeless, when 
 strength and courage flag, and when perfection seems as re- 
 mote as a star, is it not then that imperfection helps us? 
 When we see that the greatest and choicest imnges of God 
 have had their weaknesses like ours, their temptations, their 
 hour of darkuess, their bloody sweat, are we not encouraged 
 by their lapses and catastrophes to find energy for one more 
 effort, one more struggle ? Where they failed we feel it a less 
 dishonour to fail ; their errors and sorrows make, as it were, 
 an easier ascent from infinite imperfection to infinite perfec- 
 tion. Man after all is not ripened by virtue alone. Were it 
 so this world were a paradise of angels. No! Like the growth 
 of the earth, he is the fruit of all the seasons ; the accident of 
 a thousand accidents, a living mystery moving through the 
 seen to the unseen. He is sown in dishonor ; he is matured 
 under all the varieties of heat and cold : in mist and wmth, in 
 snow and vapours, in the melancholy of autumn, in the torpor 
 of winter, as well as in the rapture and fragrance of summer, 
 or the balmy affluence of the spring — its breath, its suni-hine, 
 its dew. And at the end he is reaped — the product, not of one 
 climate, but of all ; not of good alone, but of " vil ; not of joy 
 alone, but of sorrow— perhaps mellowed and ripened, perhaps 
 stricken and withered and sour. How, then, shall we judge 
 anyone? How, at any rate, shall we judge a giant — great in 
 gifts and great in temptation ; great in strength and great in 
 weakness? Let us glory in his strength and be comforted iu 
 his weakness. And, when we thank heaven for the inestimable 
 gift of Burns, we do not need to remember wherein he was 
 imperfect, we cannot bring ourselves to regret that he was 
 made of the same clay as ourselves. 
 
 No one was better fitted than Lord Rosebery to 
 give voice to the universal feeling of Scotland, and 
 the addresses here reprinted which he gave at Dum- 
 fries and Glasgow must be, and are, acknowledged by 
 all to have been in every way worthy of the time and 
 the theme. In them Lord Kosebery reached the 
 summit of his oratorical career and added another to 
 the many reasons for the place he has gained as the 
 most popular Scotsman of his day. 
 
66 
 
 (^Extraetfrom The Massae/iuseits Sisimcal Sodet;/ Proceedings.) 
 LETTER OF THE HON. E. R. HOAR. 
 
 CoNcoED, May 8, 1882. 
 
 Mt Deab De. Ellis : I find that it will be out of my power 
 to attend the meeting of the Historical Society on Thursdiiy 
 next, and I am sorry to lose the opportunity of hearing the 
 tributes which its members will pay to the memory of Mr. 
 Emerson, than whose name none more worthy of honor is 
 found on its roll. His place in literature, as poet, philosopher, 
 seer, and thinker, will find much more adequate statement 
 than any which I could offer. But there are two things which 
 the proceedings of our society may appropriately record con- 
 cerning him, one of them likely to be lost sight of in the lustra 
 of his later and more famous achievements, and the other of a 
 quality so evanescent as to be preserved only by contemporary 
 evidence and tradition. 
 
 The first relates to his address in September, 1835, at the 
 celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the settle- 
 ment of Concord, which seems to me to contain the most com- 
 plete and exquisite picture of the origin, history, and peculiar 
 characteristics of a New England town that has ever been pro- 
 duced. 
 
 The second is his power as an orator, rare and peculiar, and 
 in its way unequalled among other contemporaries. Many of 
 US can recall instances of it, and there are sev^al prominent in 
 my recollection ; but perhaps the most striking was his address 
 at the Burns centennial, in Boston, on the 25th of January, 
 1859. 
 
 The company that he addressed was a queer mixture. First, 
 there were the Burns club ; grave, critical, and longheaded 
 Scotchmen, jealous of the fame of their countryman, and 
 doubtful of the capacity to appreciate him in men of other 
 blood. There were the scholars and poets of Boston and its 
 neighborhood, and professors and undergraduates from Har- 
 vard College. Then there were State and city officials, alder- 
 men and common councilmen, brokers and bank directors, 
 ministers and deacons, lawyers, and "carnal self-seekers" of 
 ^very grade. 
 
 I have had the good fortune to hear many of the chief 
 orators of our time, among them Henry Clay, John Quincy 
 Adams, Ogden Hoffman. S. S. Prentiss, William H. Seward, 
 Charles Sumner, Wendell 1 hillips, George William Curtis, some 
 of the great preachers, and Webster, Everett, Choate, and 
 Winthrop at their best. But I never witnessed such an effect 
 of speech upon men as Mr. Emerson apparently then attained. 
 It reached at once to his, own definition of eloquence — " a tak- 
 
67 
 
 ing sovereign possession of tlie audience." He had uttered 
 but a few sentences before he seemed to have welded together 
 the whole mass of discordant material and lifted them to the 
 same height of sympathy and passion. He excited them to 
 smiles, to tears, to the wildest enthusiasm. His tribute to 
 Burns is beautiful to read, perhaps the best which the occasion 
 produced on either side of the ocean. But the clear articula- 
 tion, the ringing emphasis, the musical modulation of tone 
 and voice, the loftiness of bearing, and the radiance of his face, 
 all made a part of the consummate charm. When he closed 
 the company could hardly tolerate any other speaker, though 
 goo J ones weie to follow. 
 
 ■ I am confident that every one who was present on that even- 
 ing would agree with me as to the splendor of that eloquence. 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 E. K. HoAE. 
 Rev. Geobge E. Ellis, D. D., 
 
 Vice-President of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 
 
68 
 
 SPEECH BY MR. RALPH WALDO EMERSON AT 
 THE BURNS CENTENARY, BOSTON, 1859. 
 
 Mr. Pkesident and Gentlemen : I do not know by what 
 untoward accident it has chanced — and I forbear to inqaire — 
 that, in this accomplished circle, it should fall to me, the worst 
 Scotsman of all, to receive your commands, and at the latest 
 hour, too, to respond to the sentiment just offered, and which 
 indeed makes the occasion. But I am told there is no appeal, 
 and I must trust to the inspiration of the theme to inake a fit- 
 ness which does not otherwise exist. 
 
 Yet, sir, I heartily feel the singular claims of the occasion. 
 At the first announcement, from I know not whence, that the 
 25th of January was the hundredth anniversary of the birth of 
 Kobert Burns, a sudden consent warmed the great English 
 race, in all its kingdoms, colonies, and states, all over the 
 world, to keep the festival. 
 
 We are here to hold our parliament with love and poesy, as 
 men were wont to do in the middle ages. Those famous par- 
 liaments might or might not have had more stateliness, and 
 better singers than we — though that is yet to be known — but 
 they could not have better reason. 
 
 I can only explain this singular unanimity in a race which 
 rarely acts together, bat rather after their watchword, each for 
 himself — by the fact that Eobert Burns, the poet of the mid- 
 dle class, lepresents in the mind of men to-day that great upris- 
 ing of the middle class against the armed and privileged minori- 
 ties — that uprising which worked politically in the American 
 and French Bevolutions, and which, not in governments so 
 much as in education and in social order, has changed the face 
 of the world. 
 
 In order for this destiny, his birth, breeding, and fortune 
 were low. His organic sentiment was absolute independence, 
 and resting, as it should, on a life of labor. No man existed 
 who could look down on him. They that looked into his eyes 
 saw that they might look down the sky as easily. His muse 
 and teaching was common sense, joyful, aggressive, irresisti- 
 ble. 
 
 Not Latimer, not Luther, struck more telling blows against 
 false theology than did this brave singer. The "Confession 
 of Augsburg," the " Declaration of Independence," the French 
 " Kightsof Man, "and the " Marseillaise " are not more weighty 
 documents in the history of freedom than the songs of Burns. 
 His satire has lost none of its edge. His musical arrows yet 
 sing through the air. 
 
 He is so substantially a reformer, that I find his grand plain 
 sense in close chain with the greatest masters— Babelais, 
 Shakespeare in comedy, Cervantes, Butler, and Burns. If I 
 should add another name, I find it only in a living countryman 
 of Burns. He is an exceptional genius. The people who care 
 nothing for literature and poetry care for Burns. It was in- 
 
69 
 
 different — they thought who saw him — whether he wrote verse 
 or not ; he could have done anything else as well. 
 
 Yet how true a poet is he ! And the poet, too, of poor men, 
 of hodden-gray, and the Guernsey coat, and the blouse. He 
 has given voice to all the experiences of common life ; he has 
 «ndeared the farm house and cottage, patches and poverty, 
 beans and barley ; ale, the poor man's wine ; hardship, the 
 fear of debt, the dear society of weans and wife, of brothers 
 and sisters, proud of each other, knowing so few, and finding 
 amends for want and obscurity in books and thought. What 
 a love of nature ! and, shall I say it, of middle class nature. 
 Not great, like Goethe, in the stars, or like Byron on the ocean, 
 or Moore in the luxurious East, but in the homely landscape 
 which the poor see around them — bleak leagues of pasture and 
 stubble, ice, and sleet, and rain, and snow-choked brooks; 
 birds, hares, field-mice, thistles, and heather, which he daily 
 knew. How many "Bonny Doons," and " John Anderson my 
 joes," and " Auld Lang Synes," all around the earth, have his 
 verses been applied to ! And his love songs still woo and melt 
 the youths and maids ; the farm work, the country holiday, 
 the fishing cobble, are still his debtors to-day. 
 
 And, as he was thus the poet of the poor, anxious, cheerful, 
 working humanity, so had he the language of low life. He 
 grew up in a rural district, speaking a patois unintelligible to 
 all but natives, and he h>is made that Lowland Scotch a Doric 
 dialect of fame. It is the only example in history of a lan- 
 guage made classic by the genius of a single man. But more 
 than this. He had that secret of genius to draw from the 
 bottom of society the strength of its speech, and astonish the 
 ears of the polite with these artless words, better than art, and 
 filtered of all offence through his beauty. It seemed odious to 
 Luther that the devil should have all the best tunes ; he would 
 bring them into the churches ; and Burns knew how to take 
 from fairs and gypsies, blacksmiths and drovers, the speech of 
 the market and street, and clothe it with melody. 
 
 But I am detaining you too long. The memory of Burns — 
 I am afraid heaven and earth have taken too good care of it, 
 to leave us anything to say. The west winds are murmuring 
 it. Open the windows behind you, and hearken for the in- 
 coming tide, what the waves say of it. The doves perching 
 always on the eaves of the Stone Chapel opposite, may know 
 something about it. Every name in broad Scotland keeps his 
 fame bright. The memory of Burns — every man's and boy's, 
 and girl's head carries snatches of his songs, and can say them 
 by heart, and, what is strangest of all, never learned them 
 from a book, but from mouth to mouth. The wind whispers 
 them, the birds whistle them, the corn, barley, and bulrushes 
 hoarsely rustle them; nay, the music-boxes at Geneva are 
 framed and toothed to play them ; the hand-organs of the 
 S.ivoyards in all cities repeat them, and the chimes of bells 
 ring them in the spires. They are the property and the solace 
 of mankind. 
 
70 
 
 ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE BURNS ME- 
 MORIAL ASSOCIATION, AT BOSTON, MASSA- 
 CHUSETTS, THURSDAY EVENING, MARCH 28, 
 igoi, BY HON. GEORGE F. HOAR. 
 
 Yoa would not have bidden me hete to-night, at any rate 
 you would not have done well to bid me here to-night if you 
 had thought I should try to bay much that is original. Bobert 
 Burns is perhaps the best known character in history or liter- 
 ature. If we do not say, as Emerson did, that the pigeons oa 
 the eayes of King's Chapel know something about him, yet 
 certainly there is no man, woman or child where the Scotch 
 or the English tongue is spoken, the round world over, to 
 whom the tones of Burns do not seem familiar as his mother's 
 voice. When Scotsmen meet on his birthday they meet as 
 children meet at a Thanksgiving table, only to recall old mem- 
 ories, to think again old thoughts, and to utter common words. 
 If I have no title to speak of Burns as a Scotsman to Scots- 
 men, I have at least the touch of that nature which, whenever 
 men are thinking of him, makes the whole world kin. 
 
 There is no doubt that Bobert Burns is the hero of Scotland! 
 Wherever on tlie face of the earth there is a Scotsman, uud 
 they are everywhere on the face of the earth, that name; 
 will quicken his pulse as no other will even if it be the Bruce 
 or Wallace or Walter Scott. 
 
 Now surely it is no slight thing to be the hero of the Scots- 
 man's heart. The Scottish is one of the great races. I do not 
 know that it has or ever has had a superior. Wherever you 
 find a Scotsman, whether on land or sea, whether in peace or 
 in battle, whether in business or on the farm, in public life or 
 in family life, on the frontier or in the crowded city, whether 
 governing subject races in the East or a freeman among free- 
 men in republican liberty, whether governing empires or man- 
 aging great business institutions, sometimes harder to govern 
 than empires, thinking or acting, discoursing of metaphysics 
 or theology or law or science, writing prose or writing poetry, 
 there you may hope to find a born leader of men sitting on 
 the foremost seat and, whatever inay be the undertaking, 
 conducting it to success. 
 
 We Yaukees do not undervalue ourselves. We lay claim 
 also to the qaality .1 have just described. I think that I, a 
 born New Englander, esteem the New England character even 
 more highly than do inost New Englanders. I like to believe 
 that these two peoples resemble each other in mental quality, 
 as their rocky mountains and their rocky shores are like each 
 other, and as, in general, they have had in common the same 
 stern Calvinistic faith. I never feel more at home than when 
 I am reading the novels of the great magician or the collections 
 
71 
 
 of Scotch humor by Dean Eamsay. Dominie Sampson must 
 have been the grandfather of Parson Wilbur. Baillie Nicol 
 Jarvie was surely born in old Concord. The Scotch Elder 
 and the New England Deacon are twin brothers. Both are 
 good men, Godward, and if sometimes ' ' a little twistical man- 
 ward," it is much more rarely than is commonly supposed. If 
 either of them love to get money, he knows how to give it 
 away. If the Scotchmen, like their Yankee cousins, think it a 
 shame to live poor if they can honestly help it, they have 
 at least given one noble example of a man -who thinks it a dis- 
 grace to die rich. What a great English writer says of the 
 Scotch would answer for the New England Puritan and Revo- 
 lutionary Fathers. " Every Scotsman,'' says Charles Reade, 
 " is an iceberg with a volcano underneath. Thaw the 
 Scotch ice and you will come to the Scotch fii-e." 
 
 So Robert Burns, sprung of a great race, will always have 
 at least two great races for his loving audience. 
 
 He was fortunate also in a fit parentage for a great manhood 
 and a great poet. His mother knew by heart the ancient ly- 
 rics, many of them never written or printed, of the moun- 
 tain and the moor. They were the cradle hymns of the child. 
 His father was a Scotch Puritan. Upon the plain gray stone 
 in the churchyard at Ayr the poet carved the undying lines : 
 
 '* O ye -ffhoBe cheek the tear of pity Btains, 
 
 Draw near with piou3 rjv'r.'nce, and attend : 
 Here lie the loving husband's deiir remains 
 The tender father, and the generoas friend ; 
 
 " The pitying heart that felt for human woe ; 
 
 The dauntlHSS he:irt that fearel no human pride ; 
 The fi:iend of m^n -to vice alon t a foe ; 
 For ev'n his failings lean'd to virtue's side." 
 
 This epitaph has one fault. The poet has borrowed for it one 
 of the best lines of one of the greatest English poets. Surely 
 no other man ever lived of whom it could be said in criticism 
 that instead of taking a line from Goldsmith, he might have 
 given us a better one of his own. 
 
 Now what was this man whose fame circles the earth like a 
 parallel of latitude, whose words are known by heart to count- 
 Itas millions of men and are to.be known by heart, as we be- 
 lieve, to countless generations? He was the child of two peas- 
 ants, native of a bleak northern clime. He was born in a clay 
 cottage roofed with straw, which Lis father had built with his 
 own hands. Just after he was born, part of the dwelling gave ' 
 way in a storm, and mother and child were carried at midnight 
 to a neighbor's house for shelter. He got a little teaching 
 from his father at night, by the light of the solitary cottage 
 candle, and a little at a Parish school. But Carlyle tells us 
 that poverty sunk his whole family below the level even of 
 their cheap school system. He was born and bred in poverty 
 in a sense in which poverty has always been unknown in New 
 
72 
 
 England. Among our ancestors the hardships of the humblest 
 life were but like the hardships of camping out of a hunting 
 pnity or an army on a difficult march serving only to stimulate 
 and strengthen the rugged moral nature. It was like practis- 
 ing in a gymnasium. The man came out of them cheerful 
 and brave, with a quality fitted for the loftiest employment. 
 Campbell tells us Burns was the eldest of a family buffeting 
 with misfortunes, toiling beyond their strength and living 
 without the support of animal food. At thirteen he threshed 
 in the barn, and at fifteen was the principal laborer on the 
 farm. Wearied vrith the toils of the day, be sank in the even- 
 ing into dejection of spirits and dull headaches, the joint re- 
 sult of anxiety, low diet and fatigue. He saw his father broken 
 by age and misfortunes approaching to that period when, to use 
 the words of the son, "he escaped a prison only by sinking 
 into the grave." 
 
 This kind of life — " the cheerless gloom of a hermit and the 
 toil of a galley slave brought him to his sixteenth year, when 
 love made him a poet." His first love, it is said, was his fel- 
 low reaper in the same harvest field. He has given an im- 
 mortality to all his humble goddesses that no royal champion 
 ever gave to high-born beauty. His Mary still looks down 
 from heaven on all lovers. The star that rose on the anniver- 
 sary of her death has received a new splendor from his muse. 
 No Italian sky, no Arcadian landscape ever smiled with — 
 
 ** a gleam, 
 A light that never waa on sea or laud, 
 The consecration and the poet's dream," 
 
 like that which his genius has spread over the scene where the 
 two young lovers met to pass a single day. 
 
 Walter Scott tells us that Burns looked forward, the great 
 part of his life, to ending his days as a licensed beggar, like 
 Andrew Gemmels or Edie Ochiltree. Yet this man brought to 
 the world the best message ever brought to the world since 
 Bethlehem, of love and hope and reverence for God and man. 
 Humanity the rouud world over walks more erect for what 
 Bobert Burns said and sung. The meanest flower that grows 
 has an added beauty and an added fragrance because of the 
 song of Burns. The humblest task to which man can turn his 
 hand has an added dignity because of him. The peasant loves 
 his wife, and the mother loves her child, the son loves his 
 father better because of the living words in which Burns has 
 clothed the undying affections of the human heart. He has 
 taught us as no other man has taught ns, as was never taught 
 us outside of the Holy Scriptures, the beauty and the glory of 
 the worship of the soul to its Creator. The whole secret of 
 Scottish history, the whole secret of New England history, is 
 told in the Cotter's Saturday Night : 
 
JEAN ARMOUR BURNS BROWN, 
 
 GRANDDAUGHTER OF ROBERT BURNs' OCUEST SON. 
 
73 
 
 The cheerf u' snpper doDe, wl' eerions face. 
 
 They round the iugle form a circlo vide ; 
 The sire turns o'er wi* patriarchal grace, 
 
 The big ba' Bible, anee his father s pride ; 
 His bonnet reverently is laid aside, 
 
 His lyart haffets wearing thin an' bare ; 
 Those etraioB that once did sweet in Zion glide. 
 
 He wales a portion with judicious cure ; 
 And, '■* Let us worship Qod ! " he says with solemn air- 
 
 Then, kneeling down, to heaven's Eternal King, 
 
 The saint, the father, and the husband praye ; 
 Hope " springs exulting on triumphant wing " 
 
 That thus they all shall meet in future days ; 
 There ever bask in uncreated raj s. 
 
 No more to sigh or ehed the bitter tear ; 
 Together hymning theJr Creator's praise. 
 
 In such society, yet still more dear ; 
 While circling time moves round in an eternal sphere. 
 
 Compared with this, how poor Religion's pride. 
 
 In all the pomp of method and of art, 
 When men display to congrsKatlons wide 
 
 Devotion's every grace, except the heart ! 
 The Power, incensed, the pageant will desert, 
 
 The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole ; 
 But happ'y in some cottage far apart, 
 
 May hear, well pleased, the language of the soul, 
 And in his book of life the inmates poor enroll. 
 
 " From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs." 
 
 From scenes like these New England*s grandeur springs. 
 The spirit of the Scotch Covenanter and the New England 
 Puritan, the spirit that breathed in the prayer that rose from 
 clay cottage, and from mossy hillside, which make — 
 
 *' In fair Virtue's heavenly road. 
 
 The cottage leave the palace far behind ; 
 
 the spirit which consoled Wallace on the scaffold and encoun- 
 tered Edward at Bannockburn — we, too, know something 
 about it. It crossed the sea with our Fathers. It landed with 
 them at Plymouth and Salem. It stood, that April morning, 
 on the green at Lexington, and at the bridge at Concord. It 
 drove sir William Howe, with his regiments and fehips out of 
 Boston. It captured Burgoyne at Saratoga. It sustained 
 Washington at Valley Forge. It triumphed with Washington 
 at Yorktown. It abolished slavery. It savsd the Union. It 
 triumphed again at Appomattox. It was the spirit of God- 
 fearing, law-abiding Liberfy, loving home, djing if need be 
 for country. Certainly New England may claim the right to 
 stand by Scotland when she honors the memory of Burns. 
 
 No race or nation will ever be great, or will long maintain 
 greatness, unless it hold fast to the faith in a living God, in a 
 beneficent Providence, and in a personal immortality. To 
 man as to nation every gift of noblest origin is breathed 
 upon by this hope's perpetual breath. I am not here to make 
 an argument, I only affirm a fact. Where this faith lives are 
 
74 
 
 found Courage, Manhood, Power. ■When this faith dies. 
 Courage, Manhood and Power die with it. 
 
 No poet can be great, whatever bis genius, unless he have in 
 bis native language a fit instrument. But few languages have 
 ever been spoken among men, so far as we know, in which the 
 genius of a poet would not have found itself hampered and 
 fast bound, as the soul of Shakespere would have found itself 
 constrained and dwarfed in the body of a brute. The lyre of 
 the minstrel must be musical in tone. There are the Greek 
 and the Latin and the Italian and the Spanish and the English. 
 Among these languages the Lowland Scotch is without a su- 
 perior, if not without a rival, for the utterance of what Bob- 
 ert Bar as had to say to mankind. There was never language 
 spoken under Heaven among men fitter vehicle of the tender- 
 est pathos, of the loftiest poetic emotion, of the pithiest wit or 
 wisdom, of the most exquisite humor than the Lowland Scotch. 
 David might have written his Psalms in it and Solomon his 
 Proverbs, and ^sop his fables, and Cervantes bis immortal 
 story, and Franklin bis sage and homely counsel. If any man 
 doubt what I say, let him get The Psalms frae Hebrew inlil 
 Scottis, by P. Hatley Waddtll, LL. D., Minister, and read 
 bow King David might have spoken if he bad been insj'ired 
 to speak for Scotsmen and not for Jews. 
 
 Before we come to what we may call the quality of the soul 
 of Burns, l^t me speak of one or two gifts with which nature 
 endowed him which were essential to his greatness as a poet. 
 He had the gift of tunefulness. He said the things he had to 
 say so that you hum them like a tune. It is not enough that 
 a sentiment be noble and true, that i(. be witty or wise, to 
 move the heart and stir the pulse. It must be rhythmic in ex- 
 pression. This explains why it is that translations are seldom 
 worth anything. You may translate the thought into another 
 tongue. Bat you cannot translate the music. Throughout all 
 nature the soul needs this' influence of rhythm, if it is to be 
 powerfully moved. The ship above the water is doubled in 
 rliyme by the shadow below — the rhythm of oar-stroke witb- 
 oar-stroke, the cadence of the incoming tide, the reflection of 
 st.ir-lit sky in star-lit lake — this secret of rhythm, what it is, 
 why it so penetrates and subdues the soul, nobody knows. 
 Substitute for one word in a line of " Lycidas " or in the "Cot- 
 ter's Saturday Night" another that means precisely the same 
 thing to the intellect, and the poetry is all gone. The genius 
 of Scotland sings through the soul of Burns like the wind 
 through an .SJolian harp. His thoughts seem to come to us on 
 the wings of melodies prepared for them from the foundation 
 of the world. 
 
 Barns had the gift of humor. A famous English wit said it 
 would take a surgical instrument to get a joke into the head 
 o£ a Scotchman ; to which a famous Frenchman well answered : 
 '• True, an English joke." Certainly Sidney Smith must have 
 
75 
 
 been joking himself when he denied the sense of humor to the- 
 nation that produced Burns, 'Walter Scott, John Brown, John 
 Wilson and Dean Kamsay. I, myself , know many delightful, 
 wise and witty Englishmen. I know well the contribution 
 which the English race, to which I belong, has made tohamo'r, 
 from Chaucer, the morning star of poetry ; through Shakespere 
 down to Sidney Smith himself. But for all that, these stars 
 dwell apart. I am afraid the rays of their humor do not shine, 
 for their countrymen in general. If there be one man rather 
 than another who cannot take a joke, and into whose serious 
 and solemn conception of things not the slightest humor ever 
 enters, it is the average Englishman. 
 
 There is a book in two volumes by a Mr. Adams, entitled 
 ' 'i Wrecked Lives." He includes Kobert Burns in his list. We 
 al know the sorrow and the sin and the remorse with which 
 the life of this peasant boy — and he was always a boy — was. 
 so full. But for all that I think most of us would have liked 
 to be on that wreck. Bo not be too sure, my sanctimonious 
 friend, that the life of Robert Burns was a sad one. God 
 gave him of His choicest blessings. He gave him humor, that 
 most delightful solace and comfort ever given to man, as a 
 great humorist has said, "to enliven the days of his pilgrim- 
 age and to charm his pained footsteps over the burning 
 marie." With it He gave him what He always gives with it, a 
 tender and pitying heart, where dwelt together like twin 
 springs the fountain of laughter and the fountain of tears. 
 Burns had a humor that could make fun of Satan himself, and 
 a kindly humanity that could pity him. God gave him the 
 love of common things, the love of flowers and of birds, the 
 love of home, and the love of father and mother and woman 
 and child, the love of country, and above all a country worth 
 his love. God gave him the company of his own thoughts. 
 Did the poems that have brought such good cheer to all hu- 
 manity bring no cheer to their author? Do you think that 
 when those immortal children were born there was no lofty 
 joy of fatherhood? If ever poet knew the heart of poet^ 
 Wordsworth knew the heart of Burns. It was no figure of 
 sorrow or despair that appeared to that sure and divine 
 vision, but the figure of one — 
 
 in glory and Jn joy 
 Folloiffing his plow upon the mountain side. 
 
 If to man of woman born was ever given, not one, but a 
 thousand glorious hours of crowded life, each worth an age 
 without a name, they were given to him. "Scots wha hae 
 wi' Wallace bled" was composed by Burns on horseback in 
 the night in a terrible storm when he was drenched to the 
 skin. With what days of toil, with what nights of sleepless- 
 ness, with what hunger and thirst, with what scorn of men and 
 women, with what nakedness and rags would you or I buy 
 the immortal ecstasy of that ride in the storm when "Scots 
 
76 
 
 ■wha hae " burst upon his intellectual vision ? The peasant 
 was in good company that night when the Bruce rode behind 
 the horseman. With what travail and toil would we buy the 
 privilege for a week or a day or an hour to think the thoughts 
 of Burns ? Do you think that there was no rapture, that 
 there was no sweet consolation and comfort when the light 
 of the star that shone over Mary's grave burst upon him in 
 the silence of his prayers, as the planets break out upon the 
 twilight ? 
 
 1 suppose this plowman of ours had many a carouse which 
 left its unhappy trace upon brain and body. But on that night 
 of more than royal fun when the hours — 
 
 ** like bees laden with pleasure " 
 
 flew by Tam O'Shanter, Burns was with him. There was no 
 headache or heartache in the cup. When glorious Tam, 
 through the window of AUoway's auld haunted kirk, saw the 
 young witch, clad in little more than nature had given her, 
 take her first lesson in that immortal dancing school, and called 
 out " Weel done, cutty sark," Bobin was peeping too. Per- 
 haps it is all vain imagination. But I cannot help thinking 
 that on that occasion at least the carnal mind comprehended 
 the things that be of the spirit. 
 
 He was a noble lover, and he was a noble hater ; and like 
 that of all noble haters his hatred was born always of love. He 
 loved God. He loved Scotland. He loved Scotsmen and 
 Scotswomen, who made Scotland. He loved flowers and hills. 
 He loved justice and he loved liberty. He loved humanity. 
 He hated, and only hated, the things that were enemies of these. 
 He hated self-righteousness. He hated arrogance. He hated 
 pride of wealth and of rank. He hated cruelty. He hated 
 tyranny. Self-righteo\isness, bigotry, cruelty, tyranny, the 
 pride of rank and the pride of wealth, were the besetting sins 
 not only of Scotland but of mankind at large in his day. They 
 are not the besetting sins of Scotland or of mankind at large 
 to-day ; and that they are not is due to few men on this planet 
 in larger degree than to Burns. He brought from heaven to 
 man the message of the dignity of humanity, of brotherly love 
 and justice and pity for sorrow and for sin. And while we la- 
 ment as Burns lamented what was sorrowful and what was sin- 
 ful in his own life, yet the very fact that his life had in it so 
 much of poverty and of sorrow and of sin fitted him all the 
 more to deliver that message to mankind, gave a new power to 
 the lash with which he scourged pride and self-righteousness 
 and bigotry and tyr.mny, and disposed men to barken and to 
 give heed to that message which, perhaps, no other man could 
 have so perfectly delivered. He spoke to poor men In the right 
 of a man who was poor. He spoke to sinners in the right of a 
 man who had sinned. He spoke to freemen in the righf; of a 
 man who was free. From every line of Burns seems to come 
 
77 
 
 the old lesson — What God hath cleansed , that call not thou 
 common. 
 
 Not even the love of country for a moment quenched in the 
 heart of Burns the still holier emotion — the love of Liberty. 
 He was filled with the spirit of another great Scotsman, 
 Fletcher of Saltoun, who said: "I would die to serve Scot- 
 laud ; but I would not do a base act to save her." He would 
 never stand by even his own country in a wrong. He knew that 
 the purest love of country is that which values her honor 
 above her glory or her life. That most abominable and per- 
 nicious sentiment, " Our Country, right or wrong," found no 
 home in his bosom. When the administration of Great Brit- 
 ain plunged his country into a war against what he thought 
 the just rights of another people, he gave aa a toast : " May 
 our success in the present war be equal to the justice of our 
 cause." When somebody proposed the health of Pitt, I think 
 then the Prime Minister, he gave this : " Here is to the health 
 of a better man, George Washington. " Just after our Revolu- 
 tion he wrote an ode for General Washington's birthday, of 
 which the first stanza is : 
 
 No Spartan tube, no Attic Bbcll, 
 
 No lyre iBolJan I anako, 
 'Tis Liberty's bold note I swell ; 
 
 Thy harp, Columbia, let me take ! 
 See gathering thousands, \thile I sing 
 A broken chain, exulting bring 
 And dash it in a tyrdnt's face. 
 
 And dare him to his very beard. 
 
 And teli him he no more is feared. 
 No more the de^^pot of Oolumbia's race I 
 A tyrant's proudest insults braved. 
 They shout a People freed ! They hail an Empire saved. 
 
 What has he not done for Scotland ? I suppose that ro- 
 mantic story which Walter Scott tells so admirably in the 
 Tales of a Grandfather — a book which should be in the hands of 
 every ingenuous boy — the story of Wallace and the Bruce and 
 Randolph and the good Lord James of Douglas, of Bannock- 
 burn, of Montrose, of Argyle, of Claverhouse, of Fifteen and 
 of Forty-five, the genius of Campbell, of AUau Earasay and 
 Dr. John Brown would have made their way into the knowl- 
 edge and, even without Burns or Scott, the heart of mankind. 
 Yet, but for Burns, and one other, we should have known 
 Scotland but as we know Wales or Denmark or Norway. I 
 should be disloyal to the greatest single benefactor of my boy- 
 hood if I did not claim for Walter Scott a share in this 
 achievement. 
 
 Aye me I Aye me ! It is lang syne. It is threescore years 
 and ten ago, almost, since I used to kneel with a book by a 
 chair— I was not big enough for a table — to drink in with mouth 
 and eyes wide open those wondrous stories in the Tales of a 
 Grandfather — they did not let little boys read novels in those 
 days — of Sterling Brig and the gallant exploits of Wallace and 
 
78 
 
 }iis treacherous betrayal when Menteith turned the loaf, and 
 his dauntless beariug at the trial, and his tragic death ; of Ban- 
 ■dolph and the good Lord James of Douglas, who loved better 
 to hear the lark sing than the mouse squeak ; of the Bruce and 
 his landing on the shore of Garrick ; and the story of the 
 spider that failed six times to swing himself to the beam, six 
 times, and got there the seventh, which led King Kobertin his 
 'Cabin to remember that he had been beaten six times too, and 
 might succeed the seventh, as the spider did ; and the taking 
 of Edinburg Oastle by scaling the precipice ; and the getting 
 Douglas Castle back three times from the English ; and Ban- 
 nockburn, where the Scottish Army knelt in prayer and King 
 JIdward thought they were asking forgiveness ; and the strik- 
 ing down of the English Enight Sir Henry De Bohnn on the 
 evening before the battle ; and the death of Douglas in Spain ; 
 and his pilgrimage with the Bruce's heart, when the Spanish 
 warriors wondered that so brave a warrior had no srar on his 
 -face, and he told them he thanked God that he had always en- 
 itbled bis hands to keep his face ; and the casting of the Bruce's 
 heart in its silver case into the Moorish ranks. "Pass thou 
 first, thou dauntless heart, as thou wert wont of yore, and 
 Douglas will follow thee or die " ; and the finding the bones of 
 Bruce five hundred years after, in a marble tomb in the church 
 at Dunfermline ; and the great concourse of people — " and as 
 the church would not hold the numbers; they were allowed to 
 pass through it one after another, that each one, the poorest 
 ^3 well as the richest, migbt see all that remained of the great 
 King Kobert who restored the Scottish Monarchy. Many 
 people shed tears ! for there was the wasted scull which 
 once was the head that thought so wisely and boldly for his 
 •country's deliverance ; and there was the dry bone which had 
 once been the sturdy arm that killed Sir Henry De Bohun be- 
 tween the two armies, at a single blow, on the evening before 
 the battle of Bannockburn " ; and then afterward the story of 
 the six Jameses and of the beautiful Mary and the fatal flight 
 into England, and the scaffold at Fotheringay. Then later still, 
 though yet a boy, I read the stories of Bothwell Brig and 
 of Claverhonse — I was perfectly impartial between Cavalier and 
 Boundhead — and of John, Duke of Argyle, who when Queen 
 Caroline told him she would make a hunting ground of Scot- 
 land, answered : In that case. Madam, I must go down and get 
 my hounds ready ! " and of the death of Montrose on the 
 scaffold who "climbed the lofty ladder as ' twere the path to 
 Heaven." 
 
 These two immortal spirits, Scott and Burns, made this ob- 
 scure country, smaller than an average American State, another 
 Greece, and made of its capital another Athens, revealed to the 
 world its romantic history, taught men the quality of its peo- 
 ple, and associated their own names with every hill and rock 
 and river, and glen. They dwell forever in a mighty compan- 
 ionship, the eternal and presiding genii of the place. 
 
79 
 
 Their spirits wrap the dusby mountain ; 
 Their memories sparlile o'er the fountain ; 
 The meanest rill, the mightiest river, 
 Bolls mingling with their names forever. 
 
 The message Burns brought to mankind was something more 
 than a message of liberty or democracy, or the equality of man 
 in political rights. Those doctrines were rife already. Locke 
 and Algernon Sidney and the men of the great Hebelliou 
 and the English Eevolution had preached them. Our Fathers 
 of the Bevolution had given to the world their incomparable 
 State papers. Samuel Adams and Jefferson had surrounded 
 these doctrines with an impregnable fortress when Burns was 
 an unknown plowboy. The theoretical doctrines of liberty 
 were held by the great Whig Houses in England and Scotland. 
 Kussell and Sidney and Hampden had died for them. They 
 were preached by men who would have regarded the contact 
 of a peasant's garment vdth their own as contamination. Our 
 own Bevolutionary leaders had a high sense of personal dig- 
 nity. The differences of rank, though not based on birth, 
 were perfectly understood and rigorously enforced among 
 them. But Burns revealed to mankind the dignity of hu- 
 mility. His heart went out to the poor peasant because of 
 his poverty. He never doffed his bonnet in reverence to any 
 man because of his accidents. He never seems to have had a 
 taste for grandeur, whether physical or social. He was bom 
 and dwelt for a great part of his life in Ayr, on the seashore. 
 His daily walk was in sight of that magnificent ocean view, 
 fit to be compared, according to those who know them both, 
 to the Bay of Kaples itself. And yet he has not, so far as I 
 now remember, left a line which indicates that he was moved 
 by the grandeur and glory of the sea. The great sublimities 
 which Homer and Milton and Shakespere picture and inter- 
 pret to us were not for him. 
 
 The sublime objects of art or nature, " the cloud-rapt towers, 
 the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples," the everlasting sea, 
 the mountain summits, the splendor of courts, the pride, pomp, 
 and circumstances of glorious war, did not stir him to poetical 
 utterance. The field mouse whose nest his furrow had laid 
 bare, the daisy his plow had torn up by the roots, the cottage, 
 the country ale-house, the humble thistle spreading wide 
 among the bearded bear, the peasant and the peasant girl, the 
 weans by the mother's knee, were the things dear to him. 
 These were his inspirations. The strength of weakness, the 
 wealth of poverty, the glory of humility are what he came into 
 the world to teach mankind. 
 
 I cannot explain it. I do not know that I can describe it. I 
 cannot reason about it. But I think you know what I mean 
 "when I say that we do not think of Burns as belonging to litera- 
 ture, but only as belonging to nature. I do not care about find- 
 ing him in books of specimens of poets, or in collections of 
 poets, or on the rows of bookshelves. He belongs somehow to 
 
80 
 
 simple nature. I should rather almost be tempted to pnt his 
 picture and include him in Bewick or Audubon among the song 
 birds. You might almost expect a mocking-bird or a vesper 
 sparrow, or a bobolink, or a hermit thrush to sing his music. 
 Since he was born into the world you can hardly think of the 
 world, certainly the world for the Scotsman, existing without 
 him. You expect for him an eternity lite that of nature her- 
 self. While the morning and the evening rejoice, while the 
 brook murmurs, while the grass grows and water runs, while 
 the lark sings and the bobolink carols and the daisy blossoms 
 and the rose is fragrant, while the lily holds up its ivory chalice 
 in the July morning, while the cardinal flower hangs out its red 
 banner in August, while the heather blooms in Scotland or the 
 barberry bush adorns the posture in New England , so long the 
 songs of Burns shall forever dwell in the soul, "nestling," as 
 Lowell says, "nestling in the ear because of their music, and 
 in the heart because of their meaning." 
 
81 
 
 THE 143d ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF 
 ROBERT BURNS WAS APPROPRIATELY CELE- 
 BRATED AT FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 
 
 The celebration was held under the auspices of the Jean 
 Armour Burns Club of this city. The edifice was crowded with 
 the poet's admirers to the number of eight hundred. 
 Mr. William E. Smith, President of the Club, said : 
 After an interregnum of over twenty years, I find myself 
 again occupying the president's chair of the Washington Burns 
 Club. The old familiar faces no longer greet me ; there are 
 only a few left to tell the tale of our success in getting the 
 great meetings to listen to the words spoken by those whom 
 the nation delighted to honor her highest positions. Our mar- 
 tyred President Garfield's great speech has become a classic. 
 Senator Frye, still honored with "supreme command" in the 
 Senate, is living to testify as to the intelligent audiences of the 
 more than 400 that drank in his words of wisdom. His speech 
 brings a premium at the book stalls, necessitating its being 
 reprinted, which this Club under its new name proposes to do, 
 adding the essay of Mr. Andrew Carnegie from that great and 
 rare book, " Liber Scriptorum," by special permission. Lord 
 Eosebery's two great speeches, that of Ealph Waldo Emerson, 
 and last, but not least , the address delivered in Tremont Temple 
 by Hon. George F. Hoar, in March, 1901. These speeches, es- 
 says, and addresses are all calculated to help people to think 
 aright about Robert Burns. 
 
 This Club, by changing its name to the ." .Tean Armour Burns 
 Club," means to honor the devoted, loving wife, the kind, con- 
 siderate mother of his children, the widow who honored his 
 memory for thirty-eight years in a most acceptable manner. 
 Ladies being members of the Club give a refinement to its pro- 
 ceedings not easily attainable by any other inspiring agency. 
 To teach people to think aright about Burns is no easy task ; it 
 ia time, we think, to drop the everlasting twaddle about his 
 mistakes ; let us look for, study, and try to appreciate his gran- 
 deur in all its various aspects. 
 
 Dean Stanley, one of the truly great men of the last century, 
 in his lectures on the Scottish church, says: " Burns was the 
 prodigal son of the Church of Scotland, but he was still her 
 genuine offspring. I have already spoken of ' The Cotter's 
 Saturday Night,' but this was not all. He who could pen the 
 keen sarcasms of ' Holy Willie's Prayer,' and the address to 
 the ' Unco Guid,' which pierce through the hollow cant and 
 nariow pretensions of every church in Christendom, with a 
 sword too trenchant, but hardly too severe, showed that he had 
 not lived in vain in the atmosphere of the philosophic clergy 
 and laity of the last century, whose kind and genial spirit saved 
 
82 
 
 him from being driven by the extravagant pretensions of the 
 popnlar Scottish religion into absolute unbelief." 
 
 Mr. Andrew Carnegie, in a speech in Dumfries, October 14, 
 1899, says: "Burns has become part of the national life of 
 Scotland, and must endure as long. Scotland would not be 
 Scotland, nor would her sons be what they are, if he had not 
 appeared. Eliminate from us what that genius has influenced, 
 stimulated, and nourished within us from childhood up, in our 
 individual characters, and we cease to be Scotch. It is start- 
 ling to think that we must say of one man that we cannot be 
 truly national unless there be within us growth from the seed 
 which he sowed ; yet it is true, such the power of genius in its 
 highest development. For another reason Burns occupies and 
 will permanently hold his unique position in other lands than 
 his own, for supreme genius rules over the highest natures of 
 all lands. Its touch makes the whole world kin." 
 
 As long ago as 1844, Christopher North said : " Burns is 
 among the highest order of human beings who have benefited 
 their race by the expression of noble sentiments and glorious 
 thoughts; has he not elevated honest rusticity, lightened the 
 burden of care, aided to reconcile poverty to its lot. Advanced 
 the dignity of labor, placed a crown on the head of an honest 
 man ' tho' e'er so poor,' and proclaimed him ' king o' man for 
 a' that?'" 
 
 When visiting Scotland, after many years' absence, 1 had the 
 good fortune to meet Mr. Craibe Angus, the great Burns bibli- 
 ographer and collector — since passed to the unknown land, 
 regretted by all who bad the honor of his acquaintance. An 
 extract from the introduction of his book (which he presented 
 to me the 18th of August, 1899) will better describe the thor- 
 ough Burns student he was than anything I could say about 
 him: "Whatever be the reason for the larger circulation of 
 Burns, the fact remains that he is more electrical, more up to 
 date, more in the heart of the English-speaking people than 
 any other poet. It is not in the name of Shakespearfe, intel. 
 leotnally supreme though he be, or Milton, or Goldsmith, that 
 English, Irish, and Scotch pledge friendship to each other in 
 foreign lands. No ; on such occasions the inspiration is Bams, 
 and the alternating themes, 'A Man's u Man ' and 'Auld Lang 
 Syne.' Racial and traditional differences are forgotteii when 
 hand clasps hand and voice joins voice in rendering that 
 most magical of anthems, 'Auld Lang Syne.' The works, in 
 a word, that have the largest circulation among white men, are 
 the Psalms of David and the songs of Burns, the Sermon on 
 the Mount and the ' Cotter's Saturday Night.' " Craibe Angus' 
 great work, to be published in future, will be of immense value 
 in teaching people to think aright about the poet BurnI;. 
 
 Former Gov. Knott, of Kentucky, in a speech to the Wash- 
 ington Burns Club in 1876, concluded with this : " Mankind 
 wUl never consent that Burns shall be monopolized by A single 
 
83 
 
 nation. Humanity loves and claims him ; vast as would be the 
 chasm in the literature of his country, if the glorious offspring 
 of his genius was stricken from it, vaster still would be the void 
 in the universal heart of man if tbe wide space filled by the' 
 memory of Burns would be empty ; a memory which will grow 
 brighter until time itself shall wax old as doth a garment, and 
 tbe heavens be rolled together as a scroll. 
 
 In introducing Mr. Henderson, Mr. Smith said it was a 
 great pleasure to present a Scotchman who had reached the 
 highest obtainable political position in this country, to speak 
 for, in bis opinion, the greatest Scotchman who ever lived. 
 
 Speaker Henderson's appearance on the rostrum was the sig- 
 nal for a most gratifying demonstration. 
 
 :kemaiiks of speaker Henderson before 
 the jean armour burns club. 
 
 I do not know how you all felt, but do you know I had a 
 kind of devouring feeling for Mrs. Latey when she sang those 
 two beautiful Scotch songs, "On tbe Bonnie, Bonnie Banks 
 of Jjoch Lomond," and " Coming Thro' the Kye." It all re^ 
 minded me of my trip to Scotland last summer, which, after a 
 lapse of many, many years — yes, I say many years, because I 
 dQ pot intend to be too specific about my age [laughter] — I 
 found myself, like our worthy President, Mr. Smith, back in 
 Scotland, in the land of my birth, and away up in the High- 
 Iftfids I heard sang there this sweet song of "Loch Lomond." 
 And as the strains stole sweetly over that beautiful lake how 
 it stirred the very blood in one's veins; how thrilling it was to 
 look upon the face of that grand old mountain, Ben Lomond, 
 and to hear the sweet song of the bonnie lassie, in our midst, 
 twirling the notes of that sweet song of Loch Lomond. [Ap- 
 plause.] 
 
 But I received a tremendous shock here this evening. It 
 all happened when I saw our worthy President addressing a 
 lady, with what I thought was a little more ardour on' Mr. 
 Smith's part than he should exercise for one of his years. 
 [Laughter.] I stepped forward, of course, to study him, and 
 learned that the lady was the descendant of one of the worthiest 
 and brainiest men that ever held a seat in Congress. Turning to 
 me, this lady wanted to know if I were going to talk about 
 Burns this evening. I told her I was. " 0," she said, "what 
 more can there be said about Burns ? " This was quite a shock, 
 and as I had made no preparation for my talk the task was a 
 hard one, and this shook made it still harder, and I thought 
 about suggesting an adjournment to our worthy President. 
 [Laughter.] But I want to tell that good lady that there is 
 much to be said about Burns. I want to say to that lady that 
 in conueotiou with tbe life of Burns there is a story for father 
 
84 
 
 and mother, for the young and for the old. Do the dear things 
 in life ever grow old ? Are there no more tributes to be paid 
 to the sainted father, and to that one person unequalled in 
 earth, the mother ? Suns and moons will come and go, and 
 yet the story of the mother will be fresh, and new loves, new 
 worships, and new kisses, will be bestowed upon that sainted 
 person. Is the story of love worn out ? Will not the story of 
 love be told again and again while humanity lives on earth, and 
 will it not ever be the same fresh, pure, thrilling story ? Cer- 
 tainly we are not tired of hearing of the one great character 
 of our native land — the land of our forefathers ? No, my friends, 
 you cannot go to-day to Edinburgh, or other cities and towns 
 in Scotland, and see the monuments erected by our ancestors 
 to the people's poet without feeling one's blood take fire with 
 enthusiastic admiration. 
 
 Last summer while I was in Edinburgh the Lord Provost 
 gave me a beautiful dinner, and I related at that dinner an 
 event which occurred in our family upon the departure of my 
 father and his family from Scotland. When my father left 
 Scotland, together with mother and his brood of little chil- 
 dren, all desired to visit old Holyrood. The sentinel who 
 stood there then — and one stands there now — would not per- 
 mit us to enter, because we were dressed as peasants. We had 
 on " store clothes," so to speak, but my father wore a suit of 
 corduroy, which in those days was called, I think, " mole-skin." 
 [Laughter.] My brother and sister were allowed to pass the 
 sentinel, but when along came my father with his ruddy, hon- 
 est face, but also in corduroys, the bayonet was put down be- 
 fore him and he was told he could not enter Holyrood with 
 those clothes on. My brother hearing the trouble said, " if 
 Father can't go in then none of us will go in," and not one of 
 the Henderson family entered old Holyrood that day. But fifty- 
 five years thereafter his youngest child revisiting the land of 
 his birth found that the King had sent an order before him 
 directing that he be shown through every part of Holyrood. 
 [Applause.] I related this incident at that dinner, and before 
 that assembled body of leading men and lovely women who 
 were entertaining me at Edinburgh last summer tears were 
 my response, and how I wished that dear, old Tom Henderson 
 could have been there to see what a change fifty-five years had 
 wrought in his native land. For, although his ancestors had 
 shed their blood in Scotland's cause on many a field, because 
 he wore a corduroy suit he was not allowed to enter Holjrrood, 
 while, to-day, the humblest peasant can enter there, in the 
 land where Burns sang his immortal songs, contributing poten- 
 tially to the great change. So, my dear lady friend, something 
 yet may be said about Burns, and although I had no prepared 
 speech the lady's remark gave me a text for one, with these 
 beads ! 
 I will speak of Burns as a Preacher, a Teacher, a Liberator, 
 
85 
 
 a Philosopher, and a Poet, and that is all my speech. [Laugh- 
 ter.] I start out with the bold declaration that Bobert Bums 
 was a great man, a great preacher. The small man don't need 
 centuries to tell the world what he amounts to, and you can 
 size the small man up quickly. But it can be truly said of the 
 great man that " he is not without honor save in his own coun- 
 try." True, it may take years and even ages to tell the world 
 he was great. Great men are as simple as the daisies you tread 
 upon, and one of the attributes of greatness is simplicity. 
 Greatness springs up amongst us as the wild rose, and while 
 we feel its very presence we cannot possibly describe it. So it 
 was with Burns. While he lived he was not fully appreciated. 
 He was not fully appreciated in his own day and generation, 
 and I can even remember when a copy of Burns was not al- 
 lowed in the Henderson family. The character of Burns was 
 not appreciated by the church, and if my friend, the Eev. 
 Dr. MacLeod, had lived in those days, in the days of Burns, 
 he would have had some doubts about the character of Kobert 
 Burns. It is different now. Doctor, because you have a dif- 
 ferent laity to deal with. You deal with a different class ; 
 you deal with a class of thinkers, with those who use their 
 brains and who reason, a class who will talk about your 
 sermons and who will reason about them. But my dear 
 old father lived to see the poems of Kobert Burns read 
 almost daily in his family, and by him, too, almost as often as 
 his own family Bible. My father lived to discover that Burns 
 was a great man, and I say he was a gi-eat preacher. You can- 
 not always select the pulpit for the preacher. Take my own 
 case as an example. [Laughter.] Now, I was educated by my 
 mother for the ministry; brought up for it, and I remember 
 when often coming home from some hard Ciimpaigns in Iowa 
 my dear old mother would come to me and in a soft voice 
 - would say : "David, if I could only see you in the pulpit ; if I 
 could only see you a minister ?" " But," I would say in reply 
 to her, " my dear mother, I am a preacher. The only trouble 
 is that you cannot see and understand my pulpit." Kobert 
 Burns was also a preacher, a preacher to humanity, and I tell 
 you my friends that if this old earth of ours had more such 
 preachers in its pulpits, it would be a better world. [Ap- 
 plause.] Yes, but some say Burns drank. In regard to this I 
 want to present to you two witnesses on this subject of drink- 
 ing. You can understand from what I have already said about 
 Father Henderson that he would make no unjust charges which 
 would hurt either the church or the clergy or the pulpit, and 
 yet from him I learned (not, however, until I grew to man. 
 hood, for he would not let me into the secret while a youth) 
 that there was scarcely a minister who ever ascended the pulpit 
 in Scotland who did not beforehand take something both strong 
 and good. [Laughter.] And upon inquiry among the old men 
 of Scotland last summer they sustained the facts of this story. 
 
86 
 
 So yon see It after all depends npon the point of sight from 
 which you view the pulpit, especially when you want to do jus- 
 tice to your neighbor in a matter of this kind. But let me call 
 another witness — one who has just passed to the sacred beyond, 
 and one whom I met last summer for the first and last time in 
 Skibo Gastle, and who was the uncle of Mr. Carnegie — Mr. 
 George Lauder. Talking about Bums one day, Mr. Lauder 
 said: " He was a comparatively temperate man, attacked by a 
 drunken lot of would-be aristocrats, who slighted him because 
 he had fallen in with the politics of the young Kepnblic of the 
 United States." And the nephew of Mr. Lauder, Mr. Andrew 
 Carnegie, said of Mr. Lauder: "He stood on the very picket 
 line of the army of progress." I wish you all could have known 
 Mr. George Lander; a great stalwart man, refusing to bend 
 under the weight of 87 years ; gentle, noble, loving, intellec- 
 tual. Oliver Goldsmith drew his picture when he wrote : 
 
 " Ab some tall cliff that lifts its awful form, 
 Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm. 
 Though round its breast the rolling cloadfi are spread. 
 Eternal sunshine settles on its head." 
 
 That witness, ladies and gentlemen, is, in my judgment, a 
 sufScient defense of Kobert Burns' character. It is true he dis- 
 turbed some of the good people of his age by his "Address to 
 the Unco Guid," and also by his merciless analysis of hypocrisy 
 in his " Holy Willie's Prayer." Bat in doing this he was tear- 
 ing the mask of hypocrisy from the face of cant and supersti- 
 tion. He sang in unwavering tones the song of Liberty of 
 Conscience. He sounded the truth and lifted up the human 
 sonl. 
 
 I also said he was a teacher. How many among us when we 
 were students have longed for good teachers, especially among 
 the poets and writers. I have had many teachers among that 
 class ; sweet teachers, teachers that I loved and reverenced, bat 
 not one of them aroused the desire for study and investigation 
 in my young breast as did the Poet Burns. He was my great- 
 est teacher. He stirred op the mind. He gave life to his 
 poems. He awakened the desire for knowledge. He made a 
 man strive for the best. He taught the people to think for 
 themselves, and I want to tell you that the close student of 
 Burns has a better working education than he who has dug 
 out. in a sort of artificial way, a sheepskin from either Oxford, 
 ¥ale or Harvard. 
 
 I also referred to Burns as a liberator. Of course, most of 
 you will get the idea of a liberator when you think of Wilber- 
 force, Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, and the other good 
 men who ran the underground railway during the dark days of 
 this Uepublic. But whether he strikes the shackles from either 
 hutnan limb or human soul, such a man is indeed a liberator, 
 and such a man was Burns. You know that next to my mother 
 he made me a lover of human liberty. He gave me the idea, 
 
87 
 
 and where do you suppose I got it ? I got it from one of his 
 poems in which he says : 
 
 *^ Why was an independent wish 
 E'er planted in m; mind ?" 
 
 I think this poem of Barns,—" Man was Made to Mourn,"— 
 the greatest, perhaps, of all his poems, and I will give you one 
 
 Terse of it : 
 
 " If I'm designed yon lordling's slave- 
 By nature's law de'^igned— 
 Why was an Independent wish 
 
 E'er planted in my mind 7 
 If not, why am I subject to 
 
 His cruelty, or scorn ? 
 Or why has man the will and pow'r 
 To make his fellow mourn?" 
 
 That was the poem which inspired me. That is the poem 
 which, if placed alongside of every kingly throne on earth 
 would prove a battering-ram, a fire-brand and a torch for hu- 
 man liberty. " If I'm designed yon lordling's slave." If 
 God made me to be trampled upon, why have I the desire to 
 be unfettered and free? 0, my friends, take home with you 
 the lessons of this great liberator. There is all the philosophy 
 of free government in that simple little poem, and in it the 
 Scottish Bard wrote the Magna Oharta of human liberty. 
 
 I also said that Burns was a philosopher and a, poet. But 
 why waste time in attempting to prove this, because I regard 
 Burns as the most versatile poet that ever lived. Of course, I 
 know I may be putting this in the superlative degree, especi- 
 ally, when I remember listening to Mr. Bayard Taylor, when he 
 said the world had only produced four great poets, namely, 
 Tasso, Homer, Shakespeare and Schiller. That was quite a 
 surprise to me. Tasso was a great poet, and he touches the 
 heart strings, but deals almost wholly with war. Tasso appeals 
 to the liberator. He rings all the changes on the religious 
 heart and shows up the passions in his great epic of "Jerusa- 
 lem Delivered." But after you have read that, what more is 
 there to be said about his versatility ? No doubt Homer was 
 well named by Mr. Taylor, but after you have read all of those 
 heroic and bloody adventures there is very little in the Homeric 
 story. He even sports with death, murder, plunder, and shows 
 a picture of love, and may undoubtedly be said to dispute with 
 Burns the palm for versatility, and rises to the very summit of 
 imaginative poetry. Still, he cannot bring himself down to 
 the simple and make you a worshipper of the little flower and 
 the fleeing mouse like Burns did, in which he takes you through 
 the valleys and over the lakes, and you worship the simplest 
 things of the earth. Then, if you are a lover, take his " High- 
 land Mary," as a poem to reach the heart. In fact, there is no 
 key in the human heart which has not been touched by the 
 poetic hand of Robert Burns. The soldier has been strength- 
 ened by him for liberty's battle. Burns is loved and sung by 
 
88 
 
 all the fraternal organizations of the earth. Home say he could 
 have been poet-laureate, and I thought I would call upon Mr. 
 Smith to verify that statement, although I hardly think Burns 
 could have been prevailed upon to accept such, because he was 
 too true to the people and loved the lowly. He believed in 
 giving the poor man a chance to make something and then to 
 enable him to defend that something. 
 
 But there was one thing that I was struck with while in Scot- 
 land, and that was the Edinburgh monument to Sir Walter Scott. 
 I have not the power to describe it, with its fountains, and its 
 beautiful ornamentation. When I got to Glasgow there was 
 another fine monument devoted to S.cott, and nearby a simple 
 structure erected to Burns. - This is the situation in Scotland 
 generally. This was too much for me and I ventured to ask a 
 Scotchman how it was that there was such a vast difference be- 
 tween the monuments to Burns and those to Sir Walter Scott. 
 " I canna tell you, Mr. Henderson," he replied. " Well," I 
 said, " I have made up my mind about it. Sir Walter Scott was 
 knighted, he was attached to the nobility, and the pockets of 
 the rich opened abundantly to build monuments to one of their 
 class ; while the monuments to Burns were erected through 
 the contributions of the hard-working people among his 
 countrymen." And that was finally admitted to have been the 
 key to it. Sir Walter Scott, indeed, was a great novelist and a 
 fair poet. I have read his " Lady of the Lake " at campfites 
 and upon other occasions until I knew it by heart, but my ad- 
 miration for him, I admit, is not as great now as it was before 
 I visited Scotland, saw Loch Eathrin, Ellen's Isle and the 
 other places he describes in that poem. They did not come 
 up to my expectation in my visit to my native land. But let 
 me tell you that Robert Burns will some day have a monument 
 erected to his memory here in Washington [Applause]. That 
 grand little Scotchman, Mr. Andrew Carnegie, who stands to- 
 day unparalleled in noble generosity, and equalled by none in 
 past ages, has said to us : " Burns must have a monument in 
 the City of Washington." This is one ofthe improvements I 
 expect to live to see in Washington. But, my friends, that 
 will not be Kobert Burns' great monument. His monument 
 already rises from the noble, liberty-loving hearts of all lands, 
 in all the world. 
 
 Senator Edward W. Carmack, of Tennessee, who was to have 
 addressed the Club, sent a letter of regret. 
 
 President Smith then said : Permit me to introduce the pas- 
 tor of this church to speak of the religious character of Bobert 
 Burns and his excellent wife. 
 
 Dr. MacLeod then spoke as follows : 
 
89 
 
 SPEECH OF THE REV. DONALD C. MacLEOD, D. D., 
 BEFORE THE JEAN ARMOUR BURNS CLUB. 
 
 A prominent politician was once riding on a train when an 
 Irish lady carrying a basket laden with heavy bundles took a 
 seat immediately in front of him. When the conductor came 
 round to secure the fares, he collected from the Irish woman, 
 but passed by the politician without noticing him. Astonished 
 she turned to her neighbor and inquired : "An how is it the 
 conductor takes money from me, a poor Girish lady, and takes 
 none from ye that sames to be rich ?" The politician (who was 
 travelling on a pass) replied : "lam travelling on my good 
 looks." She looked at him for a moment, and retorted: 
 " Shure thin ye maist be nearin' the ind of your journey." If 
 we can judge from the large and cultured audience present 
 here this evening, the "Jean Armour Burns Club " is notnear- 
 ing the end of its journey, but rather standing upon the thresh- 
 old of a new era of unexampled prosperity. In all the history 
 of the world there has been no time when woman's rights were 
 so seriously considered and zealously guarded as to-day. This 
 is the golden age in woman's history. The wealth and tender- 
 ness of sentiment awakened by the names of mother, wife, and 
 sister, has led us to reflect upon a name that ought to be pecu- 
 liarly precious to every admirer of Burns, and to the memory 
 of which the past generations have not done the amplest jus- 
 tice. Our Club in its reorganization would continue as in the 
 past to discharge its obligations to Robert Burns. Moreover, 
 we would make amends for the shortcomings of the past. "We 
 would do our part in giving to the world a proper estimate of 
 the life and character of his faithful and estimable wife ; and 
 to this end we have reorganized und er the new name of "The 
 Jean Armour Burns Club," of Washington, D. 0. We would 
 not obscure the halo of glory with which enthusiastic admirers 
 surround the names of " Highland Mary," Clarinda and the 
 other heroines immortalized by Burns' generous heart and 
 radiant genius. But we would not see these exalted and glori- 
 fied at the expense and sacrifice of one more entitled and worthy 
 to share with him the triumphs of his genius. 
 
 The wanderings of Burns' affections were many and various. 
 The stream of his love was too deep and full and rapid to be con- 
 trolled in one channel, however large and unobstructed. The 
 river of his love was in a state of constant freshet, overflowing 
 all normalbounds. But there was one who occupied the sanctum 
 sanctorum of his soul. She was the High Priestess of his 
 affections. She exercised a dominant Influence over his life. 
 To her more than all other influences combined we are indebted 
 for the priceless legacy he has bequeathed to the world, and 
 this was none other than his " Bonnie Jean." His various 
 other heroines were only wandering planets, straying into his 
 
90 
 
 atmosphere, influencing him for a moment, and then pass- 
 ing out into the great unknown. Jean Armour was the centre 
 of the sphere of his emotions, around which his life revolved 
 with the fidelity and constancy of a planet revolving around 
 her sun. Burns' transcendent sentiment for his Jean is beauti- 
 fully and eloquently expressed in his immortal lines, written 
 at a time when their relations had suffered a most violent 
 rupture : 
 
 ** Though mountains rise and deserts roar. 
 
 And oceans roll between. 
 
 Yet dearer than my deathless soul, 
 
 1 love my Bonnie Jean." 
 
 With this inspired commentary of Jean's pre-eminent place 
 in Burn's affection and esteem before us, and with our knowl- 
 edge of her unwavering loyalty, unalloyed love and tireless 
 self-sacrifice for him daring his life ; her loyalty to his memory 
 and family, and her beautiful and honorable widowhood of 
 thirty-eight years, let us draw the mantle of charity and for- 
 getfulness over her one mistake, that has so many mitigating 
 circumstances, and realize that we cannot adequately honor 
 the memory of Burns without teaching the people to think 
 aright of his devoted wife, Jean Armour. 
 
 This evening the Hon. Mr. Henderson has paid a worthy 
 tribute to the manhood and genius of Burns ; glorifying him 
 as teacher, liberator, philosopher and preacher, as well as poet. 
 We do well as Scotchmen and Americans to discharge our obli- 
 gations to our own age as well as to future generations in such 
 eloquent tribute in honor of the memory and exaltation of the 
 virtues of one of the world's richest and noblest souls and 
 greatest benefactors. I shall only crave your forbearance a 
 moment longer to emphasize the religious phase of the life of 
 this great Immortal. The attitude of some people toward 
 their fellow men is represented by the man who is looking at 
 the sun through a telescope of several thousand diameters and 
 making an uproar because of the spots revealed, oblivious of 
 the overwhelming fact that regardless of these spots he is filling 
 the universe with his glorious light and heat ; or like the man 
 who refuses to inhale the matchless fragrance of the rose be- 
 cause the botanist tells it rests in a bed of thorns. We do not 
 claim perfection for Burns, this would not be human — and 
 Burns was intensely human — but we do claim that with the 
 weaknesses and shortcomings, without which he could not have 
 been the product of his age, he was one of the most magnani- 
 mous souls, one of the most compassionate, humane, forbear- 
 ing spirits, one of the most generous and loving hearts the 
 world has ever known. And while he stung to the heart with 
 his withering sarcasm the Hyper-Calvinistic Theology, and 
 peculiarly hypocritical religious life of his time, yet we chal- 
 lenge carping critics to controvert when we say that in the 
 truest sense of the term he was a truly and intensely religious 
 
91 
 
 His couceptions of God and religion were far in advance of 
 the ordinary sentiment of his country and time. His own 
 simple testimonies are his invulnerabje defense against so 
 much unjust criticism. I will quote one simple testimony 
 from a multitude of a similar character that might be cited : 
 
 " The great Creator to revere 
 
 Must sure become ihe creature ; 
 But still the preaching cant forbear. 
 
 And ev'u the rigid feature ; 
 Yet ne'er with wits profane to range 
 
 Be complalaance extended ; 
 An Atheist's laugh 'b a poor exchange 
 
 For Deity offended. 
 
 When ranting round in pleasure's ring 
 
 Religion may be blinded ; 
 Or if she gie a random sting. 
 
 It may be little minded ; 
 But when on life we're tempest driven, 
 
 A conscience but a canker — 
 A correspondence fixed with heaven 
 
 Is sure a noble anchor." 
 
 While Burns may never be canonized as a saint, nor regarded 
 as a pillar of Orthodoxy, these sublime religious sentiments, 
 breathed forth from his soul with the impress of living sincerity, 
 will ever mark him as one who has learned his lessons of relig- 
 ion from the simple unadulterated gospel of the Nazarene. If 
 he cannot accept our creeds and systems of Theology, instead 
 of condemning him, let us rejoice that he had faith to accept 
 our Bible and our Ohrist. 
 
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