"He'll need no monument,' said Fame; Proud shall it stand 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 high renown.' "Said Time, That name while I remain These words by Thomas Miller but speak in prophetic rhap sody of what will be the fate of the name we are met to hono to-night. The ovation to Burns on his centennial birthday was the greatest honor ever paid to a poet. When in 1844 hi 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 highes 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 proclaime him' King o' men for a' that?'"' The president then read the following letter from the Hon. WM. P. FRYE: W. R. SMITH, Esq., President of the Burns Club: WASHINGTON, January 16, 1875. MY DEAR SIR: I accepted, with pleasure and with pride, your kin invitation to address the Burns Club at their annual meeting, but unexpect edly find that I cannot fulfill the engagement, it having been determined b the committee, of which I am a member, to go to Louisiana at once. To sin ply say that I regret this is a cold expression of my feelings, for I shoul delight to speak, from a full heart, of Scotland, of Wallace, of Bruce, and Burns, who has made for them all a glorious immortality. And yet our mission south, it seems to me, would have been regarded t your great poet a sacred duty. Since that sweetest songster that ever sa warbled the magical words, "A man's a man for a' that," a great strugs has been waged throughout the world, sometimes silently, sometimes te ribly, to prove the fidelity of Burns to truth in that utterance. Our o country has been the theatre of one of the fiercest conflicts, the issue: 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 bless old Scotland, her mountains and valleys, her Doon a her Clyde, her Yarrow and her Tweed. "Long may her hardy sons of rust toil be blessed with health and peace and sweet content." We bless th memory, too, Robert Burns, who so loved old Scotia, her men and wome even her mice and daisies. "her silly sheep" and "courie cattle," aye, w loved all things both great and small, and couldn't hate even "auld Nicke ben." Respectfully, WM. P. FRYE. The Hon. JAMES MONROE, of Ohio, was then introduced, 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: 66 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I have now the pleasure to introduce 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 was long since forgotten. It is said in Scripture that the devil and all his works shall perish. I wonder that all the works on the devil himself have not perished. But really, he is not so 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 friend, the president, takes a family and national pride in him. When the article referred to was printed it was for the Knickerbocker Magazine, and intended to glorify “Old Nick" in literature. 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 Burns, 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 better Satan than the warrior of Milton. He takes no delight in the squealing sinner. Old "Clootie" has a nice send-off for his noted name. Burns makes him rage, to be sure, like a roaring lion, "tirling the kirks." He reproduces the wildness of the "lonely glen" and ruined castle amidst the windy winter nights. He calls on the warlocks and hags of the kirkyards, the water kelpies of the ford, and the spunkies of the moss as his associates, until he brings his Satan nunc pro tunc 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 universalism of the last verse "I'm wae to think upon yon den- which, out of the patois, means-I don't want a hell, even to put the devil in. But 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 Eschylus. 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 possessed of, and such as old wives tell of; but the sly devil, 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 missals of the scholar and the "ayes and noes of Congress. He is to be found in the imperial palace or the poorest hovel. You 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 intellect! 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 he is not the devil, it is some d-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 incarnate evil be as jolly as himself, who was an exciseman ? 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 Scotland, where an Englishman (Shakespeare) located a blasted heath," you 66 |