Various

“ The portraiture, upon the whole, is felt by us—and they know it—to demand at times pity as a due; but challenges always respect, and more than respect, for the condition which it glorifies. The Land of Burns! What mean we by the words? Something more, surely, than that Fortune, in mere blindness, had produced a great poet here? We look for the inspiring landscape, and here it is; but what could all its beauties have availed, had not a people inhabited it possessing all the sentiments, thoughts, aspirations, to which nature willed to give a voice in him of her choicest melody? ”

“ No poet ever possessed greater influence in disseminating and strengthening such sentiments, than Burns. My lord, it has been well said that wherever an humble artisan, in the crowded haunts of labour or of trade, feels a consciousness of his own dignity—is stirred with a desire for the beautiful, or haunted with a dream of knowledge, or learns to appreciate the distinction between the “guinea’s stamp” and the “gowd,” there the royal and gentle spirit of Robert Burns, lion-like in its boldness, and dove-like in its tenderness, still glows, elevates, and inspires. ”

“ Throughout all these exquisite songs, we see the power of an element which we, raised by rank and education into ignorance, might not have surmised in the mind of the people. The love-songs of Burns are prominent in the poetry of the world by their purity. Love, truly felt and understood, in the bosom of a Scottish peasant, has produced a crowd of strains which are owned for the genuine and chaste language of the passion, by highly as well as by lowly born—by cultured and by ruder minds—that may charm in haughty saloons, not less than under smoke-blackened roofs. ”

“ To the honour with which we would deck the memory of your father, your presence, and that of your respected relatives, nor less that of her sitting in honour by their side, who, though not of his blood, did the duties of a daughter at his dying bed, give an impressive living reality; and while we pay this tribute to the poet, whose glory, beyond that of any other, we blend with the renown of Scotland, it is a satisfaction to us, that we pour not out our praises in the dull cold ear of death. ”

“ The historian who has depicted, with a Gibbon’s hand, the eventful period of the French empire, and the glorious victories of Wellington, is here—a Clio, as it were, offering a garland to Erato. The distinguished head of the Scottish bench is here. In short, every town and every district, every class and every age, has come forward to pay homage to their poet. The honest lads whom he so praised, and whose greatest boast it is that they belong to the land of Burns, are here. The fair lasses whom he so loved and sung, have flocked hither to justify, by their loveliness, their poet’s words. ”

“ And thus, for many a year, we heard “souls ignoble born to be forgot” vehemently expostulating with some puny phantom of their own heated fancy, as if it were the majestic shade of Burns evoked from his Mausoleum for contumely and insult.
Often, too, have we been told by persons somewhat presumptuously assuming the office of our instructors, to beware how we suffer our admiration of genius to seduce us from our reverence of virtue. Never cease to remember—has been still their cry—how far superior is moral to intellectual worth. Nay, they have told us that they are not akin in nature. ”

“ Nor have they withheld their homage from the unfortunate in this world of chance and change, if, in abasement of condition, by doing its duties they upheld the dignity of their own nature, and looked round them on their honest brethren in poverty with pride.
And how will such a people receive a great National Poet? How did they receive Burns? With instant exultation. At once, they knew of themselves, before critics and philosophers had time to tell them, that a great Genius of their own had risen, and they felt a sudden charm diffused over their daily life. ”

“ Alone, they could not govern society; and they have a larger share in the government, as partners with the monarchy, than if they were absorbed in the general mass of the population. They have every thing to lose by the abolition of a royalty which they have ceased to fear, and which they have bound by laws. Such a royalty, with its sway over the imagination of the multitude, with its strong hand of military power—hand in which the sword is allowed always to rest, as pomp in time of peace, as weapon in time of war—such a royalty they feel to be their best protection. ”

“ We must remember that we have been made trustees of the honour of the past, and of the hopes of the future. A great country like ours has no alternative but to join the enemy of all order, or to protect all order—to league against all government, or to stand forth its champion. This is the moment for our decision. Empires are not afforded time for delay. All great questions are simple. Shrink, and you are undone, and Europe is undone along with you; be firm, and you will have saved the world! ”

“ Thou hatest her for her youth and beauty and spotless purity, like all thy wretched tribe, whom the sight of innocence and brightness sickens to the heart’s core. Thou wouldst fascinate her with thy eye of evil and thy deadly incantations.”
The moon, the light of which still struggled faintly through the fast-accumulating clouds, shone for a moment upon the face of old Magdalena, as the cripple pronounced these words. Her features were more deadly pale than usual, and convulsed with an excess of agitation at this mention of Bertha’s name, which she evidently struggled to control in vain. ”

“ In the winter storm ’tis useless to think of the sailor on his slippery shrouds; but the “outland eerie cattle” he teaches his feres to care for in the drifting snow. In what jocund strains he celebrates their amusements, their recreations, their festivals, passionately pursued with all their pith by a people in the business of life grave and determined as if it left no hours for play! Gait, dress, domicile, furniture, throughout all his poetry, are Scottish as their dialect; and sometimes, in the pride of his heart, he rejoices by such nationality to provoke some alien’s smile. ”

“ He who cheers, who solaces, who inspirits, who honours, who exalts the lot of the labourer, is the poet alike of all the sons of industry. The mechanic who inhabits a smoky atmosphere, and in whose ear an unwholesome din from workshop and thoroughfare rings hourly, hangs from his rafter the caged linnet; and the strain that should gush free from blossomed or green bough, that should mix in the murmur of the brook, mixes in and consoles the perpetual noise of the loom or the forge. Thus Burns sings more especially to those whose manner of life he entirely shares ”

“ My lord, it is neither the magnificence of our cities, nor the beauty of our valleys, the animation of our harbours, nor the stillness of our mountains; it is neither our sounding cataracts, nor our spreading lakes; neither the wilds of nature we have subdued so strenuously, nor the blue hills we have loved so well. These beauties, great as they are, have been equaled in other lands; these marvels, wondrous though they be, have parallels in other climes. It is the genius of her sons which has given Scotland her proud pre-eminence ”

“ Soldiers are the simplest race of mankind, when they come in contact with the cunning men of cities. An army, showy and even successful as it may be, is always an instrument and no more—a terrible instrument, I grant you, but as much in the hands of the civilian as one of your howitzers is in the hands of the men who load and fire it. At this moment sixty commissioners, ruffians and cut-throats to a man—fellows whom the true soldier abhors, and who are covered with blood from top to toe—are on their way from Paris to the headquarters of the fourteen armies of the republic. ”

“ We are ourselves the gainers, when thus we honour the great dead. They hear not—they feel not, excepting by an illusion of our own moved imaginations, which fill up chasms of awful, impassable separation; but we hear—we feel; and the echo of the acclaim which hills and skies have this day repeated, we can carry home in our hearts, where it shall settle down into the composure of love and pity, and admiration and gratitude, felt to be due for ever to our great poet’s shade. ”

“ The writer may adhere to the truth of human nature, while he elevates the emotions of the heart in strains which find a cordial echo in the sentiments of all mankind. Or, if his whole being is sicklied over with silliness and affectation, he may adhere to the truth of his own nature, and while writing perfectly naturally for him, he may unfold his delineations of character in such a manner as shall strip every passion of its dignity, and every emotion of its grace. ”

“ What is amply sufficient when the work of destruction is in hand, by what disastrous fatality does it become incompetent when the task is to produce and to create? Is it not true that great men have always sought and found their principal recompense in the very exercise of their high faculties? If society had wished to recompense Newton, it would have been utterly powerless to do so; there was for Newton, in all the world, no other or sufficient recompense, but the joy he must have felt when his genius discovered the laws which govern the planets. ”

“ I must remind you, that while the fact of Burns having raised himself from the rank of a Scottish ploughman, by the innate force of heaven-born genius, to the level of the greatest and most original poets of any age or country, is the noblest feature of his history, the peasantry of Scotland, in their turn, may be entitled to feel pride, even in the presence of the proudest nobles of their land, when they remember that from them, and not from the privileged orders of society, our greatest national genius was destined to arise. ”

“ There are probably many among us who can even now remember with exultation when the first ray of light was cast on their minds from the genius of Spenser—as the first glimmering of day comes to him whose sealed eyes are opened to the light of heaven, discovering objects at first dimly and then more clearly, we at length gazed in wonder and in joy on a creation vaster far, and far more lovely, than it had entered into our hearts to conceive. ”

“ At that moment, a rude gripe seized her arm and dragged her up, and a harsh voice shrieked in her ear—“Touch her not, hag of hell, to cast thy infernal spells upon her!” A scream of terror burst from Magdalena as she recognised Black Claus, the witchfinder.
“Noble Ober-Amtmann, hear me!” cried the cripple, pushing forward with force, and arresting with a wild gesture the progress of the dignitary. “I here denounce, before your noble honour, this wretched woman as a most foul and most notorious witch.” ”

“ As the sweep of the rainbow, which has its arch in heaven, and its shafts resting upon the surface of the earth—as the sunshine which falls with equal bounty upon the palace and the hut—is the all-pervading and universal spirit of poetry; and what less can we do to those men who have collected and scattered it around us, than to hail them as the benefactors of their race? ”

“ But they do demand sincerity, and integrity, and resolution, and independence, and an open front, and an eye that fears not to look in the face of clay! And have not the grave and thoughtful Scottish people always regarded with more especial affection those who have struggled with adversity—who have been tried by temptations from without or from within—now triumphant, now overcome—but, alike in victory or defeat, testifying by their conduct that they were animated by no other desire so steadily as by love of their country and its people’s good? ”

“ He stood up not for himself only, but for the great class to which he belonged, and which in his days—and too often in ours—had been insulted by the pride of superior station, when unsupported by personal merit, to every bold peasant a thing of scorn. They love him, because he vindicated the ways of God to man, by showing that there was more genius and virtue in huts, than was dreamt of in the world’s philosophy. They love him for his truthful pictures of the poor. Not there are seen slaves sullenly labouring, or madly leaping in their chains ”

“ I feel satisfied, indeed, that there is not an individual in this most interesting and splendid assemblage, who does not greatly prize and admire the fertile soil and landscape beauty of that land; whose bosom glows not with an honest pride at the intelligence, enterprise, and patriotism of the men of that land; and, above all, who does not honour and admire the beauty and accomplishments of the ladies of that land. And therefore is it, my lord, that, without further preface, I would call upon this assembly to dedicate a bumper to “The Land of Burns.” ”

“ I had been familiar with the debates of the French Convention, and had witnessed the genius of French eloquence in its highest exertions. Nothing will cure this people of their aversion to nature. With them, all that is natural is poor—simplicity is meanness. The truth of things wants the picturesque, and thus wants every charm. I had listened to some of their public speakers with strong interest, while they were confined to detail. No man tells a story better than a French conteur. There lies the natural talent of the people. ”

“ No such ovation honoured our bard, though he too tasted of human applause, felt its delights, and knew the trials that attend it. Which would Burns himself have preferred, a celebration like this in his lifetime, or fifty years after his death? I venture to say, he would have preferred the posthumous as the finer incense. The honour and its object are then seen in juster proportion; for death confers an elevation which the candid soul of the poet would have considered, and such honour he would rather have reserved for his manes, than have encountered it with his living infirmities. ”

“ It may be true, that some generous spirits are to be found here and there, some fond hearts to cling to, some noble natures which inspire an involuntary homage for their superiority; but you might as well expect to be lighted on your way by a succession of meteors. In the world, you will find that every man carries his lantern for himself; and that whether small or great his light, the first object is to guide his own steps, with not the slightest care whether yours may not be into the swamp—unless, indeed, he may have a particular object in bewildering you into the very heart of it. ”

“ This is not a meeting for the purpose of recreation and amusement—it is not a banquet at which a certain number of toasts are placed on paper, which must be received with due marks of approbation—it is the enthusiastic desire of a whole people to pay honour to their greatest countryman. It is the spontaneous outpouring of a nation’s feeling towards the illustrious dead, and the wish to extend the hand of welcome and of friendship to those whom he has left behind. ”

“ And I may venture to say there is not in this great assembly one who is not proud that he can claim to be the countryman of Spenser, and Shakspeare, and Milton, and Wordsworth, and of every one in that long list of glorious Englishmen, who have shed a lustre and conferred a dignity upon our language more bright and more majestic than illuminates and exalts the living literature of any other land. There is, I think, in the history of the progress of the human intellect, nothing more surprising than the sudden growth of literature in England to the summit of its excellence. ”

“ In assembling to do honour to the memory of Burns, in no idle or frivolous spirit, but impressed with those elevated emotions which have so plainly animated the whole of this mighty gathering, we have a right to feel that we do honour to ourselves as individuals, and as a nation. Our assembling has been prompted by a love of all that is purest and best in our national genius, as represented by our national poet. ”

“ Man is every where the creature of circumstances. Nations are what their governments make them. But France is in a state of revolt. Be it so. I demand what nation ever revolted against justice, truth, and honour? You might as well tell me, that they rebelled against the light of heaven; that they rejected the fruits of the earth; that they refused to breathe the air. Men do not thus war against their natural benefactors; they are not mad enough to repel the very instincts of preservation. ”

“ It is here almost superfluous to make any close appeal to our poet’s authority—to that most sublime description, so familiar to you all, where the old peasant on the Saturday night collects his scattered family, at the close of the long week’s labour, around his humble but happy cottage fireside, and, after a few sweet but hard-earned hours of social enjoyment, instils, before retiring to repose, from the open Word of God, into their minds those lessons of Divine wisdom which were to guide them during the next week, and through life, in the paths of religion and virtue. ”