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 sought to thrill by the voice of his 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 lyricwreathed crown that shall flourish forever. Of his three sons 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 melancholy, 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 but feel, that while you have conferred upon me a 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 endowed. But it is not his faults that are remembered heresurely it is not to honor these that here we meet together. To deny that error is error is to extenuate its blame. We make an 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 meditations on the mixed character of men, that is not only allowable, 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 undistinguishably 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 people 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 cruelest injustice was once done to Burns-the succeeding generations become more and more charitable to the dead, and desire to repair the wrong by some profounder homage. It may be truly said "the good which men do lives after them." All that is ethereal in their being alone seems to survive; 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 instruct 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 bis 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 hardening and embittering to the mind. Such, in the case of our great poet, beyond all doubt was the source of many a malignant 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 majestic 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 admiration of genius to seduce us from reverence of truth. 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 counsels 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 ignorance of the nature of both than by this wilful perversion of many of the noblest attributes of humanity in the character of Robert 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

We have

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 misrepresentations 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 poverty-to love which is indeed from heaven. From his inexhaustible 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 Christianspirit, 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 demands 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 infirmities of his meanest subjects ever was free? We know that throbs come from a kingly heart up to the brow which is rounded by a kingly crown. Aye, kings have passions 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 a guardian, a restorer, a deliverer; 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 his own passions; with the powers of evil that beset him in that seclusion in which reverend admiration would fondly believe 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 confession of his own unworthiness 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 benefactors 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 illustrious minstrel-Wordsworth-descending from height to height in the regions of song-we find that our love and gratitude is due to them as benefactors of our species. And among such benefactors 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 immortal 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 appointment and made to breathe a heavenly calm-a holy serenity? Now, I hold that such sentiments as these which I have expressed, 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 judgment on the character of Burns-a judgment which cannot on earth be carried to a higher tribunal, and which never will be reversed. It was heard of old, and struck terror into the hearts of tyrants, who quaked and quailed and fled for fear from this land before the unconquered Caledonian spear. It is a voice they were pleased to hear; it was like the sound of

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 trades, 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 independence-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 character of their souls, that they loved their country, and had no other passion so strong as the defence of the people. Aye! 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 have loved has not been exclusive-it has been comprehensive. They left the appearance of their different characters, 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 Robert 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