The Sun.
London, England, 1859-01-27 00:00:00

TILE BURNS CENTENARY FESTIVAL

On Tuesday last, the hundredth anniversary
of the birth of our national poet, Robert Burns, was
celebrated with great rejoicing throughout Glas-
gow, as indeed it was all through the country.
Several banquets, soirees, and private parties, in
honour of the Centenary of the Bard, were given
last night, and during the daytime popular enthu-
siasm ran so high as to induce a numerous display
of flags and banners. So great was the furore for
dinner parties on the part of clubs and convivial
societies, that no less than 30 applications, we are
informed, for dinners and suppers were on Tuesday
refused at the Tontine Hotel ; and the other large
hotels of the city were actually crammed with the
celebrants of the festivity.
The Grand National Festival in the City Hall,
Glasgow, was, we believe, the first projected on this
side the Atlantic. The City Hall on this occasion
was very beautifully decorated. Behind the plat-
form, and in front of the organ, was a magnificent
allegorical painting, got up under the superinten-
dence of Mr. Bowie. It representedthe various monu-
ments erected to the memory of Burns, the Auld
Brig of Doon, Alloway's Auld Haunted Kirk, and
in the centre a full-length portrait of the bard, in-
-tended to represent what sort of a monument Glas-
gow should raise to the poet's genius. This paint-
ing was flanked by the flags and banners of our
native land. The hail was chastely decorated with
wreaths of holly between the pillars, and medal-
lions hanging from the front of the gallery, inscri-
bed with mottoes and sentiments from the writings
of the bard. Around the ladies' galleries were
busts and statues a the most illustrious men of the
age. Prom the platform the coup d'ceil was splen-
did in the extreme, a more brilliant assembly never
having before been brought together in the city
under any circumstances.
Covers were laid for 620 gentlemen, and fruit,
cakes, and wine were provided for 300 ladies in the
gallery. Every seat was occupied. The company
began to assemble at a quarter past four o'clock.
While they were taking their seats, Mr. Lambeth,
the city organist, played some beautiful and appro-
priate overtures on the grand organ. Precisely at
five o'clock the chairman and committee, accom-
panied by their guests, entered the hall. The com-
pany received them standing, and while the plat-
form was being filled up, the entire audience joined
in the chorus of the noble strain of " Scots wha
ha'e wi' Wallace bled," Mr. Fulcher singing the
solo part.
Sir Archibald Alison, the historian of Europe,'
occupied the chair ; and the croupiers were r.
Robert Dalglish, M.P. ; Mr. Peter Cunningham,
son of Allan Cunningham, the biographer of Burns;
Mr. Alex. Baillie Cochrane, Lamington ; Mr. Henry
Glassford Bell, advocate ; and Mr. Walter
Buchanan, M.P.
The gentlemen took their places on the platform
in the following order :—Sir Archibald Alison,
Bart., chairman—supported on the right by Col.
Burns, Sir David Brewster, Samuel Lover, Sheriff
Trotter, and Principal Barclay; and on the left by
the Lord Provost, Judge Haliburton, R. M. Milnes,
M.P., R. Monteath of Carstairs, and Dr. Norman
Macleod.
The CHAlRMAN—Gentlemen, before we com-
mence the regular business of our convivial meet-
ing, allow me to remind you that though it is
customary to drink the memory of dead persons in
solemn silence, yet, as the memory of Burns will
never be dead, we shall, on this occasion, drink the
toast with all the honours, and in a flowing
bumper of champagne.
Sir ARCHD. AusoN proposed the health of the
Queen in a complimentary speech.
The CHAIRMAN then gave " The Prince Consort,
and the rest of the Royal Family," and " Her Ma-
jesty's Ministers," both of which were duly
honoured.
The CHAIRMAN then gave the toast " The Navy
and Army of Great Britain."
The toast was drunk with great enthusiam.
Col. MELLISH, of the Royal Sherwood Foresters,
replied.
The CHAIRMAN then rose, amid tremendous
cheering, and said—l have now to propose to
you a toast which I know will be received with
enthusiasm, the toast of the evening—" The immor-
tal Memory of Robert Burns." (Tremendous cheer-
ing continued for several minutes.) In approaching
this great subject, I know not whether to feel most
impressed with the lowliness of the origin from
which our great national poet sprung, or the colos-
sal magnitude of the fame which he has since at-
tained. (Hear, hear.) On this day one hundred
years—January 25, 1.759—a child was born in a
cottage near the now classic Kirk of Alloway, in
Ayrshire, intended apparently for a humble lot, and
to be gathered at length to his fathers unknown,
unsung, in this simple churchyard, where " his
rude forefathers of the hamlet slept." (Loud cheers.)
But this child was destined to immortality—(con-
tinned cheering)—nature had given him the patent
of true nobility, the passport of eternal fame; and
while all, or nearly all, contempora7 reputations
have already passed away, his alone is hourly on
the increase, and now shines like the fixed stars
with imperishable lustre. (Loud cheers.) It has
come to embrace not only his own countrymen, but
all who can admire genius and venerate lofty feel-
ings in every country of the civilised'globe. In every
city and village in Scotland, in not a few in Eng-
land and Ireland, multitudes are now assembled to
celebrate his genius, and wherever the English lan-
guage is spoken, in Europe, Asia, or America, one
universal chorus of admiration is resounding in
honour of our peasant son. (Cheers.) His fame
has been like the swelling eddy, which rises round
a pebble thrown by a child—the child of Nature—
into a stream, but that stream has descended into
the ocean and become a mighty wave, which has
rolled across the Atlantic and broke on the Ameri-
can and Australian shores. (Hear, hear.) Vast
as is this assembly which I now address, it is but
the relfresentative of millions in the east and in the
west, in the north and in the south, who are now
found together in the expression of common feel-
ing ; and pulse which now throbs so violently
at the very name of Burns under this roof is beat-
ing also at the same moment in the extremities of
the earth afar off in Australia and Transatlantic
wilds. Whence is this moral prodigy- in which we
all participate, yet at which we are still surprised ?
It is to few men only, and those in ages far distant
from each other, that Nature has given the
passport to immortality, and when sho has done it,
is is not on the great or the affluent that she in
general has bestowed the gift, but on the most
humble and suffering of the human race. (Ap-
plause.) She gave it to the Bard of Chios, as a
blind and needy suppliant he wandered through the
Isles of Greece. She gave it to him of the Mantuan
lake as he mourned the loss of his little freehold
under the shadow of the wide-spread beech trees.
She gave it to the exile of Florence as by the
waters of the Po he sat down and wept. She gave
it to the prisoner of Ferrara as in the gloom of his
dungeon he mourned a hopeless love. She gave it
to the Republican of England, after he had, poor
and unbefriended,

" - dazzled by excess of light,
Closed his eyes in endless night,"

But where was she to find a worthy recipient for
such a gift among the aged civilisation and na-
tional jealousies and political passions of Europe in
the close of the eighteenth century. She looked
for him in the halls of princes, but she found him
not there. She looked for him in the senates of
nobles, but she found him not there. She looked
for him in the forums of commerce, but she found
him not there. She looked for him in the solitude
of nature, and she found him beside the plough,
with his eye fixed on the mountain daisy, which
spread its humble beauties beneath his feet. (Loud
cheers.) It was in this very circumstance—the low-
liness of his origin—that the secret of his ultimate
4,reatness is to be found. (Hear, hear.) The child
''of Nature, he told us, like Homer, or the Hebrew
poet in the book of Job, what he saw and what he
felt, uninfluenced by 'the greatness unbought by
the wealth, undeterred by the criticisms of the
world. Mr. Pitt said atLohrdtL,i,vseirnpcoeolt'hs
etatbimlee,
shortly after Burns' death, t a
of Shakspere poetry had never come so sweetly
rlid
from the hand of Nature as in his rhyme ;
because
that was literally true, and true
Nature had been his only teacher. juSsetlf taught,
untutored, he poured forth in unpremeditated
lays ,‘ the short and simple annals of the poor ; "
but in their short and simple annals he found
eans to descend to the inmost depths of the
human heart, to ascend to the loftiest heights of
human feeling. " The Cottar's Saturday Night" is
the most perfect picture that ever was drawn,
not merely of individual life,but of the race of man,
inferior to none in the world in virtue and firmness
--the peasantry of our land. (Cheers.) " Auld Lang
Sync" inv.' become the national air of Scotland—the
expression of the love of home and of the scenes of
infanqr to the entire civilised world. " Scots wha
lia'e Wl' Wallace bled" is already the war song of
the bold and the patriotic of every country of the
earth—(hear, hear)—and the passion of love in its
purest form was never so finely expressed as in his
immortal lines to Highland " ...Lary in Heaven :"
" That sacred hour can I forget?
Can I forget the hallowed grove,
Where on Ayr's winding banks we met,
To live one day of parting love ?
" Ayr, gurgling, kissed her pebbly shore,
Beneath the wild wood arching green,
Where fragrant birch and hawthorn hoar
Twined amorous on th' enraptured scene.

" The flowers sprang wanton to be prest,
Tho birds sang love on every spray,
Till too, too soon the glowing west
Proclaimed the speed of winged day.

" Still o'er these scenes my memory wakes,
And fondly broods with miser care,