h its dark clusters not unmixed
with gray, and those eyes closed, lying upon the bed of death. Nor,
should it for a moment placidly appear, is such image unsuitable to this
festival. For in bidding welcome to his sons to their father's land, I
feel that, while you have conferred on me a high honour, you have
likewise imposed on me a solemn duty; and, however inadequately I may
discharge it, I trust that in nought shall I do any violence to the
spirit either of humanity or of truth.

I shall speak reverently of Burns's character in hearing of his sons;
but not even in their hearing must I forget what is due always to
established judgment of the everlasting right. Like all other mortal
beings; he had his faults--great even in the eyes of men--grievous in
the eyes of Heaven. Never are they to be thought of without sorrow, were
it but for the misery with which he himself repented them. But as there
is a moral in every man's life, even in its outward condition
imperfectly understood, how much more affecting when we read it in
confessions wrung out by remorse from the greatly gifted, the gloriously
endowed! But it is not his faults that are remembered here--assuredly
not these we meet to honour. To deny error to be error, or to extenuate
its blame, _that_ makes the outrage upon sacred truth; but to forget
that it exists, or if not wholly so, to think of it along with that
under-current of melancholy emotion at all times accompanying our
meditations on the mixed characters of men--_that_ is not only
allowable, but it is ordered--it is a privilege dear to humanity--and
well indeed might he tremble for himself who should in this be deaf to
the voice of nature crying from the tomb.

And mark how graciously in this does time aid the inclinations of
charity! Its shadows soften what they may not hide. In the distance,
discordances that once jarred painfully on our ears are now
undistinguishable--lost in the music sweet and solemn, that comes from
afar with the sound of a great man's name. It is consolatory to see,
that the faults of them whom their people honour grow fainter and
fainter in the national memory, while their virtues wax brighter and
more bright; and if injustice have been done to them in life, (and who
now shall dare to deny that cruelest injustice was done to Burns?) each
succeeding generation becomes more and more dutiful to the
dead--desirous to repair the wrong by profounder homage. As it is by his
virtues that m