are here to-night, there is not one probably, except myself, who may hesitate for a moment to regret the absence of Henry, Lord Brougham. Right gladly, too, could I have seen the hearts of this vast assembly, like boughs of the windstricken forest, swayed to and fro by the resistless impulse of his living words. But I doubt if in his own presence, had I then been privileged to speak of him, I could have ventured to have given full utterance to all my honest admiration of his great-hearted and many-handed life. (Cheers.) And yet it is possible perhaps that even as I had looked upon him face to face, there might have touched me one spark of his own impetuous and irrepressible fire, which has now for more than half-a-century flamed in the forehead of his country's story. (Applause.) He is not with us, but depend upon it, and indeed we are sure, that his sympathies are not far away from a meeting which means to appreciate the sturdy independence and the blunt honesty of a nature on which the shadows of hypocrisy or duplicity never fell-(cheers)— a meeting which means to commemorate the victorious progress of an inborn vigour, which, against the barriers of social condition, ay, and even of individual temperament, held on its earnest way till glory filled the furrows of its plough-and a meeting which means to wreathe with green gratitude the wonderful achievements of that Æolian sensibility which, placed in the window of a peasant's breast, vibrated to every whispering air or stirring breeze, or even stormy gust, which moves man's strange and chequered life, and gave back the exquisite melody, of which the undying echoes have been, and will be, wafted over "a' the airts the wind can blaw" till time shall cease to be. (Loud cheering.) Brougham is not with us, but I see him now, the Demosthenes of Britain, as he sits on the shore of the bright Mediterranean and revokes across its tideless mirror the magnificent renown and the terrible ruin of which the colossal annals, from the pillars of Hercules to the blue Symplegades, strew the whole margin of its waters. (Applause.)

may I hope for my own grand country?" (Applause.) But it is not for the sea, but for us ourselves, his countrymen and his fellowcitizens, to answer his query, and I think we may bid him be of good cheer; or at all events I think we may tell him with a cheerful pride that there has not often lived in the world any man who more truly than Henry Brougham, looking back with an undimmed eye through a retrospect of fourscore years, can track the steady and large improvement of his country by the very footprints of his own luminous and indefatigable career. That very spirit of indomitable vitality, of which, as active yesterday when he wrote that long letter with his own hand as in the vehement ardour of his prime, he scattered the seeds so broadly among us, has ripened, under his guidance, into not only abundant and general, but healthful and invigorating, harvest both of thought and of action. But I suspect that the pilgrimages of many generations of men must begin and end before there can be fairly estimated or properly fixed the precious value and the vast extent of what, directly and indirectly in every corner of the commonweal, the energy of his efforts and the influence of his example have done or helped to do. Remember that I cannot now justify this large eulogy, or even illustrate it, by particular incidents in his career. I cannot be a miniature painter. I cannot even give you his portrait in colours. I must rather try, however roughly and imperfectly, to put before you, as it were, in a model of sculpture, the muscular massive outline of the image of that individual force and that individual activity which has made itself felt throughout the length and breadth of the British empire. I set before you an avenging giant with a hundred arms, but I must leave you to select what head of the hundred-headed hydra you wish to bring down, which the hundred arms of Brougham were ever ready to attack and destroy. (Applause.) I do not dwell, therefore, upon the manifestations, I dwell upon the reality, the intensity, and the efficacy of a power which, on memorable, momentous, and even vital occasions, has photographed so vividAssyria, Rome, Greece, Carthage, what are they? ly the existing wrong, and has telegraphed so

"Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee,

Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
And many a tyrant since."

(Cheers.) And I hear him murmur to this un-
changeable witness of the awful vicissitudes of
nations and kingdoms-" Does then the past
always teach us the future? for if the free and
brilliant race who conquered at Marathon, the
Bannockburn of Greece, and if the majestic and
proud people who survived Cannæ, the Flodden
of Italy, are now crumbled into littleness al-
most worse than nothingness-shall I fear or

was

unmistakably the coming right. (Cheers.)
And I will draw the general conclusion, that
when a man has spoken and written as
Brougham has done, whether his cause
right or wrong, he has done so with a glowing
consciousness of enormous mental strength-
(cheers)-and knowing his strength, the ques-
tion is, How has he used it? And I say that
he has used it invariably, perseveringly, and
enthusiastically, and with a glorious success,
for the intellectual expansion, for the social

amelioration, and for the political elevation of
his fellow-men. (Continued cheering.) He
has invaded tyranny in all its citadels, and
shaken all its arsenals, and settled the sunshine
of the standard of freedom both upon the
heights and down in the valleys of humanity.
He has torn bigotry into very tatters, and let
in the comfort of the light of common sense
even through the densest theological atmosphere
(cheers)—and he has warred with ignorance
under every shape and in every recess, and
planted, and watered, and cherished, till its
fruits were ripe and mellow for the taste and
nourishment of all, the blessed tree of general
knowledge. I do think that the man who has
done all this may well hope, and need not fear
for his country, which by its whole life shows
that the lessons of Brougham have entered
deeply into the convictions, the aspirations, and
the daily habits of its people. And therefore
I shall, in all our names, bid the currents of the
ocean carry to that old man eloquent, upon the
shore of the great inland deep, our heartiest
thanks and good wishes, and our belief that
when he obeys the doom to which we all must
yield, even if no temple, or column, or memo-
rial tomb shall mark his resting-place, HE needs
none of them who shall be known in after times
as a man who can feel on his deathbed that,
largely by his means, man his brother in his
native land stands at this hour more erect and
free before God and his fellow-man. (Loud
and long cheering.)

The toast was drunk with enthusiasm.
Song "John Anderson, my jo"-Miss Cole.

genius, are exposed to all the trials and temptations that flesh is heir to; above all, with those who, with manly souls and genial dispositions, have known the heights and hollows of worldly fortune, the task of the biographer is necessary not only to make us know the poet, but to make us know his poems. With all its imperfections, there is no literary work more delightful than Johnson's Lives, and there has seldom been a life more deserving of commemoration than that of the great man in whose honour we are now met. (Loud cheers.) I shall not attempt to enumerate all his biographers, for their name is Legion. I shall select four names out of the list as specially deserving notice. The services of Dr. James Currie, as the first great biographer of Burns, were nearly as valuable as they were meritorious and disinterested. I do not enter on the controversy whether Currie was too forward to do what another great man forbade—

"To draw his frailties from their dread abode, The bosom of his Father and his God."

If he erred in this respect, it was not through want of charity or from bad intention, and any accusations there admitted have since been answered by anxious and ample vindications, which have enabled the cooler hands of our own day to hold the balance impartially. We now know the man as he was, with many errors that in him were unhappy, and in us would be unpardonable, but with virtues at the same time that far outweigh all his faults; with a deep feeling of piety, an ardent

Solo on the Violoncello on favourite melodies of patriotism, a wide philanthropy, a tenderness

Burns-Mr. Hausmann.

Lord NEAVES, in proposing "The Biographers of Burns, and Mr. Robert Chambers," said-It has been said that a hero is nothing without a poet to celebrate his achievements; and it may be added that a poet is not wholly himself without a biographer to commemorate his character and conduct. Some poets there may have been so fortunate as to afford few materials for a biography-who, blest with a decent competence, and exempt from violent passions, have retired to the secluded contemplation of nature, or have looked at the world through the loopholes of some calm retreat where they might behold the perils of life without partaking of them-

"With friendly stars their safety seek, Within some little winding creek,

And see the storm ashore."

(Cheers.) But with those who are cast forth upon the billows and breakers, the rocks and quicksands of human existence, who, with feel ings as quick and passions as powerful as their

of heart that embraced even the beasts of the field and the birds of the air, a lofty love of independence, a scorn for everything sordid and base, and a sincere self-abasement for his own faults. (Cheers.) But Currie was especially useful in helping men to form a true estimate of Burns' genius and works. Even in Scotland Burns was then imperfectly appreciated. But in England he needed an interpreter to introduce him. Currie discharged that office successfully, and thereby at once did. honour to the Scottish name, and rendered good service to English literature. Towards the end of the last century there seemed at one time a great risk that all manly and noble poetry would be extinct. By the influence of some silly women and sillier men, a school arose under the name of the Della Cruscan, of the most sickly and senseless sentimentality, while, on the other hand, a return to the old style of Pope and Dryden was hopeless. At this juncture there arose two men especially qualified to regenerate the public taste, and give it a truer and firmer tone than it had long

and representation of the man, while the occasion and motives of all his poems have been admirably illustrated. Altering a well-known quotation, we may say—

"Quo fit ut omnis

Votiva pateat veluti depicta tabella,
Vita viri!"

Alas! we cannot say as Boswell did in his
picture of Johnson, "Vita senis;" and we
must remember this fact. I do not in all
things assimilate Johnson and Burns, yet it
has been pointed out that they strongly re-
semble each other. Both were men of manly
and courageous minds, of strong passions and
kindly affections-both were lovers of truth
and lovers of independence. Johnson was as
superior to Burns in strength of moral principle
as Burns was superior to him in poetical power.
But Johnson had his own share of faults and
infirmities; and if Johnson had died at the age
of thirty-seven, and we had minutely known
his life when he was the companion of Savage,
and often passed the night on the streets of
London without a lodging, we might have seen
some of those traces of temptation and evil
communication which can so seldom be escaped,
and could scarcely have detected the features
of the venerable moralist who was afterwards,
from his desk as from a teacher's chair, to in-
struct and to ameliorate mankind. To Mr.
Chambers we owe, with reference to Burns, a
full and final development of the truth, and we
can there learn the lesson to forgive and avoid
his errors, to admire his virtues, and to cherish,
as we now seek to do, the memory of his genius.
(Cheers.) I ought to add that Chambers, like
Currie, has literally made his work a labour of
love, and generously surrendered the profits of
his great exertion to promote the comfort of
those of Burns' surviving relatives who needed
assistance. (Loud cheers.)

exhibited. From the seclusion of an English | been followed up, every document has been village Cowper published his "Task" in 1785, collected that could throw a ray of light on the and in 1786 there appeared in the obscure truth. We have thus, I think, a perfect history town of Kilmarnock a volume of "Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect," which needed only to be known in order to be admired. These two men were very different, and were suited to reach very different minds; but they agreed in this, that they were men of manly intellects and noble hearts, and it was impossible that where their poetry could penetrate there could be any room for affectation or imposture. (Applause.) The diffusion of a relish for Burns was in this way a safeguard against false taste, and a preparation for whatever of genuine nature or feeling we have since welcomed in the poetry of the present century. Nor would it, perhaps, be a bad thing if some of the poets of the present day would revert to those models, and imitate, without copying, the native force and straightforward simplicity -the intelligible, feelings and the transparent diction by which they are so eminently characterized. (Cheers.) It should never be forgotten as to Currie, that while he devoted to his friendly task the time and strength which might have been occupied in his profession, he generously gave up to Burns' family the whole profit a very considerable sum-which was thus realized. (Cheers.) The next names I shall couple together-Lockhart and Wilsonwho have both done justice to our great bard; and the eulogy of Wilson is one of the noblest pieces of criticism in the language. These men, adorned with all the learning of classical studies, and accomplished in all the arts that confer literary skill, recognised fully, by an instinctive sympathy, the merits of him who had "followed his plough upon the mountain side;" and they gave him their admiration, not as a sentiment of relative wonder due to a show or a prodigy, having reference to his origin and position, but as a tribute of just praise to an equal to one who, in his own department, was absolutely and abstractly, both in sentiment and in expression, an unrivalled master Mr. R. CHAMBERS thanked the company for of his art. (Applause.) I now come to the the kind notice that had been taken of his last of the list--one who, in closing the pro- name as a biographer of Burns. He feared it cession, has done his work so fully and so ex-might be held presumptuous in him to have haustively, that he seems to have made it impossible that he can have a successor. Our friend and fellow-citizen, Mr. Robert Chambers (cheers)—has brought to bear on this task that power of industry and skill of research which in other departments, and particularly in Antiquities and in the Domestic Annals of Scotland, have rendered such services to his country. In preparing his Life of Burns, every source of information has been visited, every track that promised any advantage has

entered a field in which he had had such dis-
tinguished precursors; but it must be attributed
to Burns himself and to the growth of his fame.
From his earliest years he had felt the keenest
interest in Burns and his poetry.
There was
indeed no name of the past which he had been
accustomed to regard with so much veneration
and love as that of Robert Burns. There were
some men who objected to him and his writ-
ings; but he never could understand what
constitution of mind these men
were of.

who, when carrier between Dumfries and Edin- | to the company, and in no language could he burgh, knew Burns well; and who now resides do so so appropriately as in the language of at Craigmillar, then ascended the platform Burns himself. He was there on the kind inamidst loud cheers. The old man, to the vitation of the committee to preside-an invitaamazement of the audience, recited "Tam o' tion which he was deeply gratified to find the Shanter" from end to end, in a strong voice meeting had adopted. He might return, then, and with "due emphasis and discretion." the kind of invitation that Burns once returned when asked to dine with a friend. He could not go, and his reply was:—