to those men who
have collected and scattered it around us, than to hail them as the
benefactors of their race? That has been the purpose of our gathering,
and we have held it in a fitting spot. Proud, indeed, may be the
district that can claim within herself the birthplaces of Burns and of
Cunningham; and proud may we all be--and we are proud, from yourself, my
lord, to the humblest individual who bore a part in the proceedings of
this memorable day--that we have the opportunity of testifying our
respect to the genius that will defy the encroachment of time: and which
has shed, and will continue to shed, a splendour and a glory around the
land that we love so well! My lord, I am honoured in having to propose
"The memory of the Ettrick Shepherd, and of Allan Cunningham."

Sir D. H. BLAIR, Bart., of Blairquhan, said--My Lord Eglinton and
gentlemen, I have been requested to give the next toast, which I very
much wish had fallen into abler hands. It is a toast, my lord, that is
as well calculated to call forth enthusiastic bursts of eloquence as any
we have listened to with such delight to-day; but as on that account I
feel quite unable to do it adequate justice, I must trust to that
acclamation by which I am confident it will be received, without any
effort on my part. We all recollect the words of our immortal bard,
when, in alluding to the manner in which nature had finished this fair
creation, he says--

"Her 'prentice han' she tried on man,
And then she made the lasses O!"

I am sure every man in this assembly will join me in an enthusiastic
bumper to the health of the "Countess of Eglinton, and the ladies who
have honoured this meeting with their presence."

Colonel MURE of Caldwell, said--In obedience to the order of our noble
chairman, I have to request a bumper to the Peasantry of Scotland. In
order justly to appreciate the claims of this most estimable class of
our fellow-citizens upon our sympathies, I must remind you that to it
pre-eminently belongs the honour of having given birth to the remarkable
man whose memory we are this day met to celebrate. I must remind you,
that while the fact of Burns having raised himself from the rank of a
Scottish ploughman, by the innate force of heaven-born genius, to the
level of the greatest and most original poets of any age or country, is
the noblest feature of his history, the peasantry of Scotland, in their
turn, may be entitled to feel pride, even in the pre