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

fore, had great pleasure in proposing the two
Houses of Parliament. (Cheers.)
The toast having been received with great
applause,
Mr. BUCHANAN, in returning thanks, said—ln
the name of the members of Parliament who are
present, I beg to return thanks to the Very Rev.
Principal for the toast which he has proposed and
also to this meeting for the manner in which it has
been received. (Applause.) I regret that no member
of the House of Lords should be present ; but I am
sure that it does not arise from any want of interest
in the commemoration which we are now celebrating.
The muse of Burns has wide sympathisers, and has
spoken to the heart of the peer as well as the pea-
sant. (Cheers.) The highest rank and the most cul-
tivated. intellect alike confessed the power of his
genius; and dull, indeed, must be the feelings of the
man who has not responded with patriotic emotion
to " Scots wha ha'e wi' Wallace bled."—(cheers—
who has not warmed with firmer self-reliance
to the stirring strain, " A man's a man for a' that,"
or been melted with the pathetic cadences of " Man
was made to mourn." (Renewed cheers.) Of one
thing, at all events, I am sure, there can be no true
representative of the people, certainly none of the
Scottish people, who has not felt'in the depths of
his soul a sympathy with the noble sentiments of
our national bard. Long may therebe found in our
representatives that genuine independence, that
contempt for affectation, pretence, or hypocrisy, that
high-souled scorn of whatever is mean or untruth-
ful, which emanated from the bard of Ayrshire.
(Cheers.) To such men may safely be entrusted a
nation's destinies. They will neither truckle to the
great and powerful, nor court the voice of the
crowd. (Hear, hear.) So long as a British Parlia—
ment shall maintain its independence, it will have
the resepect of such meetings as this. (Cheers.)
Mr. H. G. BELL said—Every one has felt that it
is not always on those occasions when he is most
anxious to say something worthy of being listened
to, that he is best able to satisfy his own wishes.
I confess that to-night I feel my mind almost over-
powered when I reflect on the grandeur of the de-
votion—not national only, but world-wide—that is
being paid to the memory of one man. I question
whether such an amount of grateful and affec-
tionate remembrance was ever before concentrated
and so extended. The question naturally occurs—
Whence all this gratitude P—honourable alike to
him who occasions and him who cherishes it; surely
no unworthy sentiment, since it ascends to the
Creator through the person of one of his created.
Whence this gratitude ? Simply because that
Scottish peasant added more than most men to the
stock of human happiness ; and he did so by throw-
ing wider open the gate of human knowledge.
(Cheers.) The most valuable of all knowledge is
knowledge of ourselves, and it is that the poet
teaches. Great as the benefactor of his species is
who extends the confines of science, not less great
is he whose finer eye looks with a clearer percep-
tion into all the subtle mechanism of the human
heart. (Cheers.) Robert Burns invented no steam
engine, but he knew the secret source of tears and
smiles ; he discovered no new planet, but he
called up thoughts that twinkled in the soul like
stars, for he touched, as with a fiery finger, every
latent emotion until it started into light ; he made
us no richer in worldly wealth, but he taught us
how divine a thing human love may be ; he taught
us the nobility of earnest patriotism and unflinch-
ing manliness ; he taught us how these, or any of
these, may make the darkest life resplendent with
a gleam of inward lustre. (Cheers.) Hence comes
it that thousands of his fellow-men, who never saw
him in the flesh, have to-day met in every quarter
of the globe to do him honour ; hence it comes that
4C the might
Of the whole world's good wishes with him goes;
. Blessings and prayers, in nobler retinue
Than sceptred -king or laurelled conqueror knows,
Follow this wondrous potentate I"
In Scotland all this feeling is intensified by the con-
sciousness that Burns was essentially, and, from his
cradle to his grave, our countryman—a Caledonian.
The country to which other great men have be-
longed seems often to have been an accident of
birth. There appears no reason why Shakspere
might not have been born in Scotland, and Beattie
or Campbell in England. But Burns never ! He
was a concentration of the genius of Scotland. His
patriotism was Scotch—
" Wha for Scotland's King and law,
Freedom's sword will strongly draw,
Freeman stand, or freeman fa', ,
Let him on wi' me !"
(Loud cheers.) His delight in the beauties of 'ex-
ternal nature was Scotch—
" Their groves o' sweet myrtle let foreign lands reckon,
Where bright beaming summers exalt the perfume ;
Far dearer to me yon lone glen o' green breckan,
Wi' the burn stealing under the lang yellow broom."
His loves were Scotch, and the happiest moments
with the objects of his love were in the midst of
Scottish scenery—
" Ye bank and braes and streams around
The Castle o' Montgomery,
Green be your woods and fair your flowers,
An' there the 'longest tary ;
For there I took the last fareweel
0' my sweet Highland Mary."
(Applause.) His noble independence was Scotch—
" Is there for honest poverty
Wha hangs his head and a' that,
The coward slave we pass him by--
eWeres.d) a r eHbiespeooarrlfioers
ta'
athnade
(Loud ch latest aspirations
were Scotch—

41 Even then a wish, I mind its power,
A wish that to my latest hour
Shall strongly heave my breast,
That I for poer auld Scotland's sake •
Some useful plan or book could make,
Or sing a sang at least."
Shall Scotland not .be proud of her peasant poet—
.. " Who murmur'd to the running brooks
• . . A music sweeter than their own I"
(Cheers.) Show me a song-writer from the days
of Anacreon to the days of Beranger, who comes
within a thousand miles of him. (Immense ap-
plause.) All social and friendly gatherings do good
to the hearts of care-worn Melt ; but we have
assembled here to-night with a nobler motive than
to eat and drink and be merry. We have assem-
bled to do justice to the better parts of our nature,
by declaring our veneration for a true bard who
died in poverty, but who has made us heirs to
the priceless riches of his own effulgent mind. I
leave the theme with reluctance, but it has already
been descanted on with an eloquence that has
charmed us all with a copious grace and beauty
peculiar to the rich, genial, and refined mind of an
Alison. (Applause.) The toast I have the honour to
propose is " The Poets of England." I do not
know whether it is meant to be limited to the
living poets ; if so, their number, I fear, is small,
taking the word poet in its true and proper sense.
But fthink it may be understood to comprehend
all those poets who shed, about twenty-five years
ago, so brilliant a light over the literary horizon.
Their bodily presence has been taken from us, and
it is a somewhat sad thought for those who, like
myself, have been privileged to look upon their fine
and thoughtful foreheads, and to hear their living
voices that nothing now remains of a Byron, a
Coleridge, a Wordsworth, a Southey, a Shelley, a
Rogers, a Hemans, and a Landon, but the moulder-
ing dust in their graves. Yet, though dead, they
still speak to us solmenly and sweetly—none with
more sweetness than Wordsworth, because none
with a truer and purer human love and under-
standing. The sacred key was intrusted to the
keeping of them all, by which the deeper heart of
man is unlocked ; and the electric thrill emanating
from them diffuses itself through all lands—
" One touch of nature makes the whole, world kin I"
(Applause.) Of living poets I shall not pretend to
speak ; but, as Wordsworth in his beautiful sonnets
on -personal feeling says, he will mention two
female portraitures "pre-eminently dear"—
" The gentle lady, wedded to the Moor,
And heavenly Una with her milk-white lamb—"
so. I shall venture to name two poets as standing
conspicuously out among all our living minstrels,
and sending abroad from their resounding lyres
richer and nobler melodies than any of their com-
peers. You will not doubt that I mean Alfred
Tennyson, and the high-minded lady Mrs. Barret
Browning. (Cheers.) Their Styles are altogether
different, each marked by its own originality ; but
in the works of both there is a repertory of dig-
nified and graceful thoughts, of deep glowing feel-
ings, of suggestive and lofty imaginings, which
have worthily won for them a place far up the
sacred mount. Of them, and of all who labour at
the same delightful tasks, we say with universal
voice—
" Blessings with them, and eternal praise,
Who gave us nobler loves, and nobler cares ;
The poets who on earth have made us heirs
Of Truth, and pure delight, by heavenly lays ?"
(Loud applause.) Permit me to couple with my
toast the health of an English poet now present,
whose English heart is not the less sound that it
has in it some Scotch affections, which inspired him
with a poet's- yearning to do honour with us to
Scotia's bard. Mr. Moackton Milnes—(applause)
—so well known for his more recent exertions in
the cause of legislative and social improvement,
has written, among other effusions of great energy
and beauty , " Memories of many Scenes." I hope
that to-night will enable him to add to them a fresh
memory which he may deem worthy of cherishing,
and that he will at least believe that " poor auld
Scotland," whilst it remembers departed, welcomes
living genius. (Prolonged applause.)
Mr. MONCKTON MILNES, in acknowledging the
toast, said—l have been labouring under some in-
disposition, and am particularly unfitted to address
you upon this great occasion. But, nurtured as
have been in the love and admiration of Robert