of Burns' memorials, is very extensive and in- startling combination of the wild and the tender, teresting:

"He passed through life's tempestuous night
A brilliant trembling Northern Light,
Through after years he shines from far
A fixed unsetting Polar Star."

the terrible and the homely, which swayed his
heart and inspired his muse. Since Ayrshire
contains not merely the spot of his birth but the
scene of his youth and his prime, of his sports
and his toil, of his loves and his friendships—
the scene of his nascent thoughts and springing
fancies, where his young genius tried her early
wing-and

"As he walked in glory and in pride,

Following his plough upon the mountain side," his great heart swelled with its high aspirings -amid such scenes an Ayrshire man may be forgiven an intense and peculiar feeling on the subject. (Cheers.) But Burns belongs not to Ayrshire alone, but to Scotland; and, in a sense, not to Scotland alone, but to humanity. In every part of the habitable world where Scottish enterprise has penetrated, and the Scottish tongue is known, and Scottish hearts

To that star, clear and bright, after the lapse
of a century-a glorious light and yet a beacon
light-all eyes are now turned. No poet of
any age or country has obtained the same posi-
tion in popular admiration and affection as
Burns. Truly it is said by Wilson-a noble
and appropriate eulogist of such a man-
(cheers) Burns was by far the greatest poet
who ever sprung from the bosom of the people,
and lived and died in humble condition." As
the embodiment of popular genius, the champion
of popular independence, and the type of pop-
ular elevation, his memory-not the memory of
his faults and his follies, but the memory of his
matchless genius and his noble spirit-is cher-beat with manly feeling and patriotic emotion,
ished close to the heart of every Scottish man.
(Loud and continued applause.) In my own
county of Ayr, to my connexion with which I
owe the honour of my present position, this
feeling is greatly intensified. His memory
there is inscribed on every feature of natural
scenery, and associated with every phase of do-
mestic life. Everything there around us is im-
pressed by his genius and vocal with his name.
(Cheers.) We seem to hear it in the song of
every bird and the murmur of every stream, in
the sough of the night-wind that rocks the
raven's nest at Alloway Kirk, and the rippling
of the moon-lit waves breaking on the coves of
Culzean; our breezes whisper, and our rocks
repeat, all nature echoes, and the heart of man
owns it with responsive throb. There, in a
lowly cottage, on "the banks and braes o'
bonny Doon," dwelt his worthy father-he who
is so touchingly and beautifully described in
"The Cottar's Saturday Night," as reading to
his gathered household from "the big ha' Bible," |
and offering the family prayer, so impressive in
its simple solemnity-

his works are universally felt to be a great
popular treasure his fame a great popular
heritage-his genius a great popular impulse,
as it sheds gladness on the humble home, and
cheers the social board, and inspires the dream
of young ambition, and revives the courage
of sinking hope. (Loud cheers.) To the
Scottish peasant Burns represents and illus-
trates all that he prizes most: his order en-
nobled; his humble lot dignified; his unuttered
aspirations expressed in words that set his heart
on fire; his country honoured by the genius
of the cottage-born. But there have been
other peasant-bards; and it is not alone to his
humble birth, his rural toils, and his Scottish
dialect, that the name of Burns owes its popular
spell.

The true power of the charm lies in
three qualities, characteristic alike of the man
and of his poetry-sensibility, simplicity, and
reality. He was the poet not of fiction but of
truth. His joys and tears, his passion and his
pathos, his love and his pride, the reckless
mirth of his jovial hours, and the remorseful
sadness of his subsequent reflections-all are
real-the product not of his fancy, but of his
experience; and as he clothes in language of
modest and nervous simplicity his natural and
earnest thoughts, his words find an echo in the
heart. Under all the forms of affectation,
whether it be of thought, or fancy, or feeling,
or style, the charm of poetry breaks and the
power of genius withers; and of all true poetry
the inspiration should be drawn, like that of
Burns, fresh, clear, and gushing, from the
fountains of natural thought and feeling.
Burns, though the best of song-writers, was
no mere song-writer. Had he never written a
song, his poems would have made him im-

haunted kirk, the accumulated horrors on the table, the dance of witches to the unearthly music of the demon-piper on the bunker, the furious rush of the startled legion with Cuttysark at their head, the crisis of Tam's fate at the keystane of the brig, and the gray mare skelping hame without her tail! (Laughter and applause.) In the midst of this wild description, where horror and humour prevail by turns, how beautiful is the vanity of earthly pleasure touched off:

mortal; had he written an epic or dramatic
poem, the author of "The Cottar's Saturday
Night," and of "Tam o' Shanter," could not
have failed; and in any view he must rank, not
merely as the greatest poet of humble station,
but as one of the greatest poets whom the world
has produced. (Cheers) In my humble opin-
ion there is more genius in Burns' songs than
in volumes of our modern poetry. Sometimes
in sublimity, sometimes in pathos, sometimes
in graphic description, sometimes in elevated
sentiment, sometimes in exquisite humour, and
always in tender and passionate emotion, Burns
is without a rival. (Loud applause.) Let petty
fault-finders and carping cavillers object as they
may-(vehement and renewed cheering)—the
true test of the power of Burns' poetry is, that,
like what is recorded of his society, criticism
is disarmed by intense emotional impression.
There are deep springs in the human heart,
often covered and hidden by the rubbish and
débris which the tide of life deposits as it rolls
along; other poets pass over the surface and
pierce not the interposed earthiness; but these
hidden springs are stirred by the power of a
spirit like Burns, and Nature, evoked from her
deep and rarely-reached recesses, owns the
touch of a master-spirit, and bursts forth re-
sponsive to the call of true genius. (Loud
cheering.) I should trespass too long on your
time if I once began to quote in illustration of
this peculiar character of Burns' poetry. What
heart does not feel that "The Cottar's Satur-"
day Night," "The Vision," the "Lament," and
the address "To Mary in Heaven," with others
too numerous to mention, are poems of the
rarest and highest order? What can be finer,
wild and startling as it is, than the "Address to
the Deil," and the picture of the great enemy

(Great cheering.) "Tam o' Shanter," to any one well acquainted with the Scottish dialect, is magnificent. (Great cheering and laughter.) It is scarcely possible to refrain from quoting; but I must forbear. Notwithstanding the supernatural ingredients so admirably wrought into the tale, it has all the air of a reality. Every Scotsman, especially every Ayrshire-man, with a mind above the clods of the valley(loud cheers)-can close his vision on existing objects, and in his mind's eye can see Tam, and the Soutar, and the landlady, and the parting cup, and the ride in the storm, the auld

"But pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flower, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow-fall in the river,
A moment white-then melts for ever;
Or like the borealis race,

That flit ere you can point their place;
Or like the rainbow's lovely form,
Evanishing amid the storm."

But wonderful as "Tam o' Shanter" is, our ad-
miration is increased by the extraordinary fact
that the whole poem was written, not in Ayr-
shire, where he was in the midst of the scenes,
but at Ellisland, and between breakfast and
sunset of one day. Among the many specimens
of the broad and hearty humour of Burns, I
may mention "Meg o' the Mill," "Tam Glen,”
"Death and Dr. Hornbook," where rare caustic
humour alternates with a power almost sublime;
and "Hallowe'en," where the rustic sports of
that now almost forgotten festivity are charm-
ingly described. Think of the adventure of
Fechting Jamie Fleck "—

"Who whistled up Lord Lennox' march
To keep his courage cheerie;
Although his hair began to arch,
He was sae fley'd and eerie :
Till presently he hears a squeak,
An' then a grane and gruntle,
He by his shouther ga'ed a keek,
An' tumbled wi' a wintle
Out-ower that night.

He roared a horrid murder-shout
In dreadfu' desperation!

And young and auld came rinnin' out,
To hear the sad narration;

He swore 'twas hilchin Jean M'Craw
Or crouchie Merran Humphie,
Till, stop-she trotted through them a',
An' wha was it but grumphie,
Asteer that night!"

(Laughter.) Or call to mind the scaring of
Leezie on the brae-a sketch in which the
graphic and humorous spirit is relieved by a
bit of exquisitely beautiful description:-

"A wanton widow Leezie was,
As canty as a kittlin;

But, och! that night, amang the shaws,
She got a fearfu' settlin'!

She through the whins, and by the cairn,
And owre the hill gaed scrievin,

dashed on the fatal rocks which have wrecked impure particles have subsided, and we now so many of his countrymen. His lot, indeed, rejoice only in the pure and generous qualiwas cast on evil times,-on times peculiarly ties which remain. I do not seek to disguise perilous to such a temperament as his. The or to palliate his faults-but who among us is tone of morality in his day was not pure or without faults? Charity, which hopeth all high; the tone of religion was cold, and hard, things and thinketh no evil, ought to be our and low. To the prevailing devotion of his monitor. (Applause.) Let us "gently scan day, generally cold, frequently ascetic, some- our brother man -let us judge ourselves times hypocritical, there was an antagonism in severely, and others leniently-let us gather Burns' nature. (Loud cheers.) Genuine, prac- the good we can, though it be intermingled tical, and loving piety might have charmed with evil-let us use aright the more favourand won him. If, instead of the stern or the able appliances which surround us-let us cold preachers who repelled his feelings and strive ourselves to cultivate a purer morality, stimulated his opposition, there had met Burns and adorn by our lives a sounder religious a pastor in whose large and genial heart dwells profession; but let us admire in Burns whatlove and sympathy as well as faithfulness, who, ever is worthy of admiration, and honour his true to his own convictions, recognises in others genius as it deserves. Those who object to the rights of conscience, whose preaching and this demonstration must remember that the whose life presents religion in her most at- power of Burns over the popular mind of tractive aspect, and whose imperishable me- Scotland is a great fact which cannot be morial will be read in the statistics of dimin- ignored. (Enthusiastic applause.) Burns has ished crime, in the testimony of reclaimed lived, and has written, and has a hold upon children, and in the records of converted the heart of Scotland. (Renewed cheering.) souls, who can tell what impression might It is well to qualify our praises, and to inculhave been made on him? He was not so cate the warning lessons of his life. But surely fortunate. To him was rarely presented the it is not the part of wisdom or of virtue so to instructive illustration of the influence of true repudiate such a man as to consign to the cause religion on human character. That influence and the friends of mischief a name and fame so comes in no harsh or ascetic spirit, it diverts attractive and so potent. (Long-continued no noble aim, it extinguishes no honourable applause.) Let us rather deal with the power ambition, it quenches no pure fire of genius, of Burns' name as science has dealt with the no flame of virtuous love, no generous senti- electric element. Science has not stood afar ment or kindly feeling, but, entering with off, scared by each flash, mourning each shivsearching power into the heart, out of which ered tower; science has caught and purified are the issues of life, it expels from the the power, and chained it to the car of com"dome of thought" and the fountain of feel- merce and the chariot of beneficence, and ing the dark spirits of evil, it raises man to applied it to the noble purpose of consolidathis true dignity, and directs his faculties to ing humanity-uniting all the world by the their appropriate aims. We must deplore and interchange of thought and feeling. On this condemn much in the character and in the day Burns is to us, not the memory of a writings of Burns; we must lament that the departed, but the presence of a living power spirit in which he wrote the "Cottar's Satur-(enthusiastic cheering)-the electric chain day Night" did not always prompt his pen or guide his life; but there was much to deplore in the character of the times in which he lived. Time has not passed in vain over the influence of Burns. Shakspeare says

"The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones." The popular enthusiasm of Scotland has reversed the process. From the grave of Burns it has resuscitated the buried good,-and the evil now only lives that the lesson and the warning may be learnt. As a mountain torrent, depositing its earthiness as it flows, comes after a long course to reflect the face of heaven on its bosom, time has cleared and mellowed the influence of Burns-(applause) -like an old and rich wine, the coarse and

which knits the hearts of Scotchmen in every
part of the world, stirring us not only to ad-
miration of the poet's genius, but to the love
of country, of liberty, and of home, and of all
things beautiful and good. Therefore, I call
on you to pledge me, not in solemn silence,
but with our heartiest honours, to "The Im-
mortal Robert Burns." (The chairman, whose
speech was delivered with great power and
fervour, resumed his seat amidst volleys of
cheers.)

Song "There was a lad was born in Kyle "-Mr.
Stewart.
the following verses, composed by himself for the
Mr. JAMES BALLANTINE (Secretary), then read

occasion.

BURNS' CENTENARY BANQUET.

I dreamed a dream o' sitting here,
Delighted wi' our canty cheer,