im who believes. But, unterrified by plague and
pestilence, he had carried comfort into houses deserted but by sin and
despair; or he had sailed away, as he truly believed for ever, to savage
lands, away from the quiet homes of Christian men--among whom he might
have hoped to lead a life of peace, it may be of affluence and
honour--for his Divine Master's sake, and for sake of them sitting in
darkness and in the shadow of death. Therefore his name dies not, and
all Christendom calls it blest. From such benefactors as these there may
seem to be, but there is not, a deep descent to them who have done their
service by what one of the greatest of them all has called "the vision
and the faculty divine"--them to whom have been largely given the powers
of fancy and imagination and creative thought, that they might move
men's hearts, and raise men's souls, by the reflection of their own
passions and affections in poetry, which is still an inspired speech.
Nor have men, in their judgment of the true Poets, dealt otherwise with
them than with patriot kings, benign legislators, and holy priests.
Them, too, when of the highest, all nations and ages have reverenced in
their gratitude. Whatever is good and great in man's being seems
shadowed in the name of Milton; and though he was a very man in the
storms of civil strife that shook down the throne at the shedding of the
blood of kings, nevertheless, we devoutly believe with Wordsworth, that

"His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart."

But not of such as he only, who "in darkness, and with danger compassed
round," soared "beyond this visible diurnal sphere," and whose song was
of mercy and judgment, have men wisely resolved to dwell only on what is
pure and high and cognate with their thoughts of heaven. Still, as we
keep descending from height to height in the regions of song, we desire
to regard with love the genius that beautifies wherever it settles down;
and, if pity will steal in for human misfortunes, or for human frailties
reproach, our love suffers no abatement, and religious men feel that
there is piety in pilgrimage to such honoured graves. So feel we now at
this commemoration. For our Poet we now claim the privilege, at once
bright and austere, of death. We feel that our Burns is brought within
the justification of all celebrations of human names; and that, in thus
honouring his memory, we virtuously exercise the imaginative rights of
enthusiasm owned by every peopl