ory of Burns, and have welcomed his sons to the land of
their father. After the address--which I may be permitted to call the
address of manly eloquence--which you have heard from our Noble
Chairman; after the oration--which I may be permitted to designate as
solemn and beautiful--which you have heard from our worthy
Vice-chairman--I should be inexcusable were I to detain you long with
the subject which has been entrusted to me. The range of English poetry
is so vast--it is profuse in so many beauties and excellences, and many
of its great names are approached with so much habitual veneration, that
I feel great diffidence and difficulty in addressing you on a subject on
which my opinions can have little weight, and my judgment is no
authority; but to you, whose minds have been stirred with the lofty
thoughts of the Poets of England, and are familiar with their beauties,
nothing is needed to stimulate you to admire that which I am sure has
been the object of your continual admiration, and the subject of your
unfailing delight. We have been sometimes accused of a nationality which
is too narrow and exclusive; but I hope and believe that the accusation
is founded on misapprehension of our feelings. It is true that, as
Scotsmen, we love Scotland above every other spot on earth--that we love
it as our early home, and our father's house. We cherish our feelings of
nationality as we cherish our domestic affections, of which they are in
truth a part. But while we have these feelings, we glory in the might
and the majesty of that great country, with which, for the happiness of
both, we have long been united as one nation. We are proud of the
victories of Cressy, of Agincourt, and of Poictiers, as if they had been
won by our own ancestors. And I may venture to say there is not in this
great assembly one who is not proud that he can claim to be the
countryman of Spenser, and Shakspeare, and Milton, and Wordsworth, and
of every one in that long list of glorious Englishmen, who have shed a
lustre and conferred a dignity upon our language more bright and more
majestic than illuminates and exalts the living literature of any other
land. There is, I think, in the history of the progress of the human
intellect, nothing more surprising than the sudden growth of literature
in England to the summit of its excellence. No sooner had tranquillity
been restored after the long civil wars of the Roses--no sooner had
men's minds been set free to en