laid in the noblest mausoleum of the world,) the
Ettrick Shepherd, and Allan Cunningham--what names for a country to
record in its annals, in the brief space of one generation!

But the speech to which all looked forward with the utmost expectation
and anxiety, was that of Professor Wilson. His zeal in the cause of
Burns, his earnest and reiterated defence of his reputation, were so
well known, that on this occasion, when the balance might be held as
finally struck, and when the nation, by its own voluntary act, had
recognized the position which its poet, through all time coming must
maintain, it would have been felt as a vast and serious omission if the
last elegy had not been uttered by the greatest vindicator of his fame.
It _was_ so uttered, and none but those who listened to that address can
conceive the effect which it produced. Elsewhere than in these pages we
should assuredly have attempted some comment upon it. As it is, we shall
borrow an opinion of the provincial press, from the pen, we believe, of
the Editor of the _Dumfries-shire Herald_, Mr Aird, himself a spectator
of the scene, and a man of high intellect and imagination, whose remarks
we have been led to adopt, not from the eulogy they contain, but from
their just and reverential truth:--

"The remarkable speech of the day was Professor Wilson's. Since the time
when in his 'bright and shining youth' he walked seventy miles to be
present at a Burns' meeting, and electrified it with a new and peculiar
fervour of eloquence, such as had never been heard among us before, how
manifold, how multiform have been this man's generous vindications of
our great Bard! Now broad in humour; now sportive and playful; now
sarcastic, scornful, and searching; now calmly philosophic in criticism;
now thoughtful and solemn, large of reverent discourse, 'looking before
and after,' with all the sweetest by-plays of humanity, with every
reconciling softness of charity--such, in turns, and in quickest
intermingled tissue of the ethereal woof, have been the many
illustrations which this large-minded, large-hearted Scotchman, in whose
character there is neither corner nor cranny, has poured in the very
prodigality of his affectionate abundance around and over the name and
the fame of Robert Burns. It became him--and he knew it--that on this
great and consummating occasion, so full of reconcilement betwixt human
frailty and human worth, his address, on which so much expectation
w