The Sun.
London, England, 1859-01-29 00:00:00

THE B URNS' FESTIVAL.

(From the National Standard of this day.)
On Tuesday, as the Centenary of Burns' birth, an ex-
hibition was given at the Crystal Palace, with songs, busts
and pictures of the poet, and recitation of a poem to his
memory. As the detail will be found in another part of
our paper, we shall not enter into it here. The Crystal
Palace Company have been blamed, as if assuming to them-
selves a right to commemorate the memory of the Scottish
poet ; and, unquestionably, the notion of adding to the
honours of any name by a celebration of this kind would be
preposterous. But, the Company are traders; they have
lately, in their opening on the Sabbath, displayed their
appetite for finance in a very palpable degree, and we re
gard the Burns' Festival in a much less objectionable point
of view, as a mere commercial contrivance.
On the same day, by the force of example, according to
the well-known, and not very complimentary proverb,
several celebrations of the same kind occurred ; one by the
Caledonian Society ; one at St. Martin's Hall ; one at Bris-
tol ; and one at Edinburgh. There can be no harm in these
things ; they gather people, they give them singing and
playing, they break in on the general monotony of life,
they furnish a topic for the day. Still, it is a pity that all
this exuberance of sentiment did not glow, while its object
was among the living ; and that an occasional bawbee was
not wrung from the national heart, to relieve the poverty of
him whom they now load with such tumultuous praise.
Robert Burns was born near the town of Ayr ; the son of
a small farmer, an industrious and intelligent man ; but,
either pressed by the severity of his leases, or by that ill
luck which sometimes ;pursues men, however industrious
and intelligent, his life seems to have been spent in difficul-
ties. Robert was, of course, intended for a ploughman, and
he laboured in the field, like his father. But, the habits of
the Scottish peasantry have allowed, in general, of consi-
derable mental cultivation. He was sent to school, and
learned English grammar, to which he added some know-
ledge of French. Books are frequent in Scottish cottages,
and Robert read the miscellaneous collection which he found
on his father's shelves. But, his inspirer was an old woman,
whose memory supplied him with ghost stories, and those
rude ramblings of adventure, which were to be found at
every country fireside, yet unstripped of the spirit of poetry
by the steam engine.
We are now in an utilitarian age. Our intellect is gash
our circulation is steam, our nerves are machinery, and our
hearts are .Consols. The time will never come again when
the young eye saw visions in .the hills, and the young blood
was chilled with the imaginary night shriek ; we shall never
believe in another Macbeth ; no Hamlet will make himself
or his audience tremble while he questions ghosts on the
doings of those regions "from whose bourne no traveller.,
returns." The generation is inevitably prosaic, matter et
fact, stubbornly substantial ; the railroad is our oracle,
Birmingham our Parnassus, and Mr. Stephenson our
" Magnus Apollo."

Yet, matters wore another hue, a hundred years ego'
And we can conceive no fitter training for an imaginative
mind than a wild Scotch farm, a cabin on the side of a storm'
swept hill, a wintry climate, a hard life, and an evening's
gossiping of all strange times and things, over a smoulder-
turf fire. Such was the training of Burns ; such, too, Was
the training of Scott (with some slight advantage of scholar-
ship), and such will loe the natural training of every man
destined to be an original poet, since Homer.
The " sweet singers of Israel" never sang more sweetly
than when they hung their harps on the willows of the
Euphrates. The finest of the charming melodies of Ireland
were the compositions of men hunted from hill to valley,
in the day of poverty to themselves, and in the age of sor-
row to their country. Poetic greatness was never nurtured
in the sunshine—it requires the cold wind and cloudy skies
of life. Even Milton, with all his superb scholarship,
would never have told us of the wars of the Cherubim, but
for his poverty, blindness, and solitude. Byron, though
born to rank, was trainee for distinction only through an
ungenial infancy, the harshness of a wayward parent, and
stung into the consciousness of his powers only by libel on
the first feeble efforts of his poetry.
Burns, if he had been planted at his birth in the aristo-
cracy, fondled in drawing-rooms; imbibed claret at his
assuming the "toga virilis " and passed the next fifty years
between the soirees of Belgravia and the levees of St.
James's, might have lisped sonnets or scribbled epigrams,
but he would never have written "Tam 0' Shanter. '

The progress of Burns's life was all through adversitp
He tried the trade of a flax-dresser, but was burnt out. lie
then tried a partnership in a farm with his brother, but was
forced to give it up. Tn his extremity, he even offered Wl!'
self as a slave-overseer to a plantation in Jamaica! 1°
obtain the means of an outfit, he published his poems 11
subscriptions, in 1786, and was on the point of sailing for ble
unhappy destination, when he received a letter, not from
any of the great, or the opulent, of his country, but from
Blacklock, the blind poet, advising him to try a new editioll
in Edinburgh. There he remained for a year, making
friends, gained £5OO by subscriptions, and obtained an er
ciseman's place ! In Edinburgh he was a lion for the tinlet
but none can live on praise. The lionwasnot fed, and Bur'
retired to a farm once more. He tried this chance for three
years, and again failed. He was now reduced to his miser'
able salary as an exciseman. His habits, at no time
abstemious,. were now, by the temptations of his unfor-
tunate position, destructive of his health, and he died'
(July 21, 1796.)
In this sketch of his biography, it is scarcely possible re,
,
speak with patience of the national neglect, which suffered
a man of known and even popular ability, to perish ;
we see the profusion of shallow, honours showered on
Iva
tomb. That Burns was a poet, that he was in povertit
that his talent was a credit to Scotland, that a hundredth
part of the money flung away upon busts, inscriptions, and
anniversaries in his honour, would have made him a haPP7
man; and that his countrymen suffered him to live in die"
tress, and die in penury, are all truths, which dishonour al
whole tribe of his admirers, panegyrists, speechmakers, an,
adorers. Not a man of the thousands and tens of thousanael
who toasted him in taverns, and boasted of him everywhe,.l
from the Line to the Pole, ever would put his hand in
oiaw
purse to cheer the dying poet ; not one of those
lords," who once lavished their metaphors on"the native
bard of Scotia old," 'would stir hand or foot to put 13,1 e:
above poverty, by some appointment consistent with tlf.:
pursuits of genius. A guager's place of some £5O a pp:
was the sole bounty to be found in their patronage, 0..17
man whose temptation was excessive, and who speedily we'
under the luckless opportunity. .
In the year 1844, a festival in honour of Burns was heldt
in the town of Ayr, Lord Eglinton in the chair. On that
occasion, the noble chairman indulged his applauding a„11:
diencewith a few of the following fine things :—" How
could the pious old man (Burns father) who dwelt in yolr,
der cottages, have guessed that the infant
,prattling on n'
knee was to be the pride of his nation, the chief araong,
the poetic band ; was to be one of the brightest planets that
glow round the mighty sun of the Bard of Avon. (Cheere°)
Well may we rejoice that Burns is our own That 07
other spot can claim to be the birthplace of our Homer
Oh, that he could have foreseen the futurity of falacf
created for him this day, when the poet and the historian
the peer and the peasant, vie with each other in paying the
tribute of their admiration to the humble, but mighyr
genius of him, whom we hail as the first of Scottish poets
(Cheers.) At his name every Scottish heart beats high'
He has become a household word, alike in the palace and
the cottage. Of whom should we be proud, to whom shed
wo pay homage, if not to our own immortal Burns'
(Cheers.)
We are not objecting to this speech. It was clever, and
appropriate to the occasion, if not to the man. Nor are N"
objecting to the noble Lord's not being among the bella:
factors of Burns, fifty years before he was born. But,
object to offering national festivals to a man national/
glected during his life ; to assuming the ostentation of feel
ing for the dead,:while there was none for the living; ft.
to affecting a national generosity to the grave, where
living wants of the man of talent could not extract the
most trivial tribute from the callous avarice of his gelleriP.
tion.
If we were the countrymen of Robert Burns, we shall
be ashamed of all allusion to his name ; we should shriel
from the mockery of posthumous patronage ; and we should
endeavour to conceal the parsimony which it is hopeless t°
palliate. We utterly scorn the cheap atonement and the
tardy liberality.

THE OUTRAGE ON OUR TROOPS 4T

MALTA.

(From the National Standard of this day.)
• We rejoice to find that the outrageous Garrison Order, t°
which wo have already called attention, will not pass en'
noticed. Thee al
Town Council is about to Mr
morialise her Majesty, praying that the official who ertsi
nated such an order, may be dismissed—the oTder cancelled
—and all proceedings against Captain Sheffield stayed.
The man who has dared to issue this disgraceful order
is Sir John Gaspard Le Marchant ; the man who cons'
manded • that Popish regiment which during the gener-i
election of 1841 shouted for O'Connell in the streets
Carlow; the man who, being on full pay in the Britt,9l
Army, preferred the service of " Her Catholic Majesty
Isabella 11., to that of Great Britain, and went out to SP';
in the notorious Spanish Legion, in 1836. From such -
man it would be simply absurd to look for Protestant pri"
ciple or high feeling. He is only fit to be the tool of
Minister like the present Secretary of War, himself an utter
stranger to such sentiments.
We learn that an influential deputation is about to vast
upon Major-Gerecal Peel on this subject. We are sorry
for it. The man who has used his power in every possill
manner to endow and propagate Popery in the army ; f
has furnished the " Garden of the Soul," at the expense of
the nation, to the poor Romanist soldier, who has beetn
guilty of flippant impertinence to the Scotch Reformatic:
Society, is not likely to sympathise with Captain Sheffielt;
Had the deputation decided upon remonstrating with Lord
Derby as the head of the Government, it might perhal
have been more likely to meet with attention, if not Ns•
success. But, as for holding any intercourse or commui'l;
cation with Major-General the Right Hon. Jonathan Pee',
Secretary of State for War, we hold it to be beneath the
dignity of Christian Protestant gentlemen to submit to SI
degradation of any contact or intercourse with him. 1,7„
do not anticipate that it will be attended with a favourable
result.

-oniy a few weeks have elapsed since the nation was dlB
gusted by the announcement from the military authorities
that Popish priests were appointed military chaplaill
anking according to their classes with colonels, majors, al,"
ranking according to their classes with colonels, majors, a 0
captains. But this is not enough—and immediately fe';
lows this garrison order in Malta, commanding (among!,
ether monstrosities)? " all sentries to present arms wH
THE HOST rAssEs' in other words, commanding Britislit
soldiers to commit an act which the law and religion 01
England pronounced to be blasphemous and idolatrous'
This (be it remembered) is to be done in our own dominiot
not in a foreign friendly country. We know tolerably wei
the various insults to which Protestant officers and soldier;
,
are subjected by the wretched subserviency to Popery whie'!
is creeping into every department ; but we trust that thbl
nation is at length roused from its apathetic slumbert and
that in a voice of thunder the British Government will e'
informed that such proceedings will be endured no longer;
The time for mild remonstrance and humble protest 113
gone—the public must speak and act decisively and ever"
getieally. There is a wide difference between toleratioP
and apostacy.

- -
LIVERPOOL, Jan. 28.—1 n addition to the Cunard
Royal mail steamer Africa, which sails to-morrow for
Halifax and Boston, the Cunard Company's steamer Lobs'
non will sail to-morrow for New York direct, carlying?
ship's mail. Letters will bo received at the Liverpool Yost
office till 2.15 p.m., and with late fees till 2.30 p.m. Th
screw steamers Imperador and Imperatiz, having on boar,'
tie new Bed Sea telegraph cable, have sailed this afternooo
for Suez, and 'on their arrival tho submersion of the cable
will be at once proceeded with,