s, and it were asked, what need now for
such commemoration, since his fame is coextensive with the literature of
the land, and enshrined in every household? I might answer, that
although admiration of the poet be wide as the world, yet we, his
compatriots, to whom he is especially dear, rejoice to see the universal
sentiment concentered in one great assemblage of his own people: that we
meet in thousands and tens of thousands to honour him, who delights each
single one of us at his own hearth. But this commemoration expresses,
too, if not a profounder, a more tender sentiment; for it is to welcome
his sons to the land he has illustrated, so that we may at once indulge
our national pride in a great name, and gratify in filial hearts the
most pious of affections. There was, in former times, a custom of
crowning great poets. 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. And could he have foreseen
the day, when they for whom at times he was sorely troubled, should,
after many years of separation, return to the hut where himself was
born, and near it, within the shadow of his monument, be welcomed for
his sake by the lords and ladies of the land; and--dearer thought still
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 his first
voice of inspiration; surely had the Vision been sweeter to his soul
than even that immortal one, in which the Genius of the Land bound the
holly round his head, the lyric crown that it will wear for ever.

Of his three Sons sitting here, one only can remember their father's
face--those large lustrous eyes of his, so full of many meanings, as
they darkened in thought, melted in melancholy, or kindled in mirth, but
never turned on his children, or on their excellent mother, but with one
of tender or intense affection. That son may even on this day have
remembrance of his father's head, wit