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

THE 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 hall 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 of the most illustrious men of the
age. Prom the platform the coup d'csil 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'o wi' Wallace bled," Mr. Fulcher singing the
solo part.
Sir Archibald Alison, the historian of Europe,
occupied the chair • and the croupiers were Mr.
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. ALIsoN 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, 1759—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
-auy passed. away, nig-alone is noufly 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
honoiir of our peasant son. (Cheers.) His
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 representative 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 the 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 she 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."
Tiut 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
greatness 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 unhought by
the wealth, undeterred by the criticisms of the
world. Mr. Pitt said at Lord_ ,
Liverpool's. table,
sine
shortly after Burns' death, that e the time
of Shakspere poetry had never come so sweetly
from the hand of Nature as in his rhyme ; " and
that was literally true, and true just because
Nature had been his only teacher. Self-taught,
untutored, he poured forth in
unpremeditated
lays "the short and simple annals of the
e poor; "
but in their short and simple annals h found
means 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
Syne' hasp become the national air of Scotland—the
expression of the love of home and of the scenes of
infancy to the entire civilised world. " Scots wha
ha'e we 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 finer expressed as in his
immortal lines to Highland' Mary 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 hear
Twined amorous on th' enraptured scene.

" The flowers sprang wanton to be prest,
The birds sang love on every spray,
Till too, too soon the glowing west
Proclaimed the speed of winged day.
i‘ Still o'er these scenes my memory wakes,
Aud fondly Imo& with laser care,

Time but the impression deeper makes,
As streams their chaimel deeper wear."

(Loud cheering.) All the world has joined in admi-
ration of these exquisite lines ; but our wonder at
them becomes greater when we recollect that they
were written by the poet on the anniversary of
Mary's= death, after he had concluded the labours of
the harvest field, when resting on some corn
sheaves, with his eye fixed on the evening star,
whose growing light " proclaimed the speed of
winged day." (Cheers.) To us, and to Scotchmen in
every part of the world who can appreciate the
fidelity of his pictures, the poems of Burns possess
a peculiar and indescribable charm ; they recal
scenes of early youth, long unseen, but stillfo
unr-
gotten, and realise in waking hours the beautiful
words of the poet in the Soldier's Dream—
" I flew to the pleasant fields traversed so oft,
w
In life's morning march, when my bosom was young;
I heard my own mountain goats bleating aloft,
And knew the sweet strains which the corn-reapers
sung." -
(Cheers.) But the universal admiration with which
the poems of Burns have been hailed, not merely
in his own country, but over the whole civilised
world, prove that, great as his graphic powers were
they were the least of his varied gifts. (Cheers.)
It was the depth of his feeling, his warm expansive
love for all mankind; the touching pathos which
shone forth in his pieces, which everywhere went to
the heart. His tenderness extended even'to inani-
mate objects. The hare, the field mouse, the moun-
tain daisy, have been celebrated in his songs. Above
all, he possessed in the highest degree that great qua-
lity without which, in the trial of time, all others
are but as tinkling brass—a due appreciation of the
dignity of human nature, and a determination to
assert it. (Loud cheers.) To him we owe those
noble lines now become as household words in every
land of freedom :
" The rank is but the guinea stamp,
The man's the gowd for a' that."

(Cheers.) To this quality also he owed many of
the misfortunes with which his life was embittered.
Had he condescended to flatter the great, to conci-
liate the affluent, to fawn upon the multitude, he
might have earned ease and comfort in life ; but he
disdained to do any of the three. Therefore he was
neglected by his cotemporaries—therefore we are
now raising statues to his memory. (Cheers.)
Gentlemen—lt is said that Burns was a Radical.
I know he was; but I do not respect him the less
on that account. (Cheers.) I wish we had more
Radicals like Burns. (Continued cheering.) Most
men of his ardent and poetic tempernment are in-
clined to those opinions, and were so especially in
's day. They see in others the generous feelings
of which they are conscious in themselves. It is
well they are so ; they would miss their mission if
.41,1
they were not. Genius is the moving power of the
moral world. Experience is the fly-wheel which
regulates the movements of the mighty machine;
without the first it would. stand still ; without
the second it would be torn in pieces.
It is by the counteracting influence of the
tIVo, as by the antagonistic action of fire and
water in the material world that the equilibrium of
nature is preserved ; and thus is secured at once
the life, the progress, and the stability of nations.
(Hear.) But if. Burns WaS a Radical he was not
less a patriot. He was no advocate for domestic
broils or foreign interference, for what said he to the
Dumfries Volunteers, of whom he was a member P---;
" Be Britons still to Britons true,
Among yourselves united ;
For never but by British hands
Maim British wrangs be righted."
(Cheers.) A more serious charge brought against
Burns is that his life was sometimes irregular, some
of his poems effusions which, however, admired at
the moment, his warmest friends must now lament.
Gentlemen, in reference to this charge I will not
repeat the common excuse that his frailties were
those to which men of an ardent and poetic mind
have in all ages been most subject. I disdain any
sueh apology. I recognise no exemption from moral
responsibility in the sons of genius. I know rather
that from him to whom much is given much also
will be expected. But I say he was a son of Adam.
Let him that is without sin among you throw the
first stone. (Cheers.) I would answer in the words
of Bolingbroke, when reminded of the faults of his
great political antagonist, Marlborough—" Yes, I
know he had faults ; but he was so great a man
that I have forgot what they were." (Loud cheers.)
And I would recommend his detractors to imitate
his example—to expiate passing faults by lasting
benefits to his species, and like him to cause the ,
spots on the sun to be forgotten in the lustre of his
rays. (Cheers.) But one great moral truth I extract
from the fate of Burns, and that is, that no lasting
fame is to be acquired, even by the brightest genius
save that which is devoted to the purposes of virtue,
for the few poems of Burns which we now lament
have long since passed into oblivion, aid those on
which his immortal fame is rested are as pure as the
driven snow. And, as such, they will form an unseen
bond which will for ever unite Britons and their
the severance of empires ; and "- Auld -tang
syne" will hold together the wide-spread
descendants of the British empire when grown into
independent States—
"Tho' seas atween them since hoe roll'd." .
....

Gentlemen, I have detained you too long, and I
conclude in the words of the poet—
" A last request permit me here,
When yearly ye assemble a',
One round, I ask it with a tear,
To him, the Bard that's far awa."
The learned chairman then resumed his seat amidst
tremendous cheering, and the toast was drunk with
the most enthusiastic demonstrations of delight.
Colonel BURNS, who on rising to reply, was
received with great applause and waving of hand-
kerchiefs, said—Sir Archibald Alison, ladies and
gentlemen, I heartily thank God that he has
prolonged my life to see such a glorious day—a day
on which so many thousands are assembled in every
quarter of the globe to do honour to the memory of
the bard. I remember my mother telling Mr.
M‘Diarmid of Dumfries that my father once said to
her, " Jean, they will ken me better a hundred
years after this than they do now." (Loud cheers.)
I heartily thank you that you have given me the
occasion of being present to join in this glorious
meeting—presided over, as it is, by the celebrated
historian of Europe—supported by such a galaxy
of talent as is here in the-persons of Judge Hali-
burton, Principal Barclay, Mr. Monckton Milnes,
Mr. Glassford Bell, and many others. (Cheers.) In
no part of the world will this occasion be more
celebrated with enthusiasm than in the far East,
where I have come from, and where I have spent
so many years of my life. And here I may appro-
priately quote the lines of Col. George Anderson
Veitch, the author of many " Burns' Birthday
Odes," from his " Exile in India" :

The music of Scotland is sweet.mid the scene,
But, ah ! could you hear it when seas roll between
'Tis then, and then only, the soul can divine
The rapture that dwells in the songs of langsyne."
(Cheers.) Ladies and gentlemen, I have joined, as
a leal Scot, as a warm admirer of the bard, in doing
honour to his memory ; and permit me, as his son,
to thank you for the enthusiasm with which you
have responded to the toast.
Mr. Stembridge Ray sang, with much taste and
feeling; " Highland Mary."
Band—" The Campbells are comin'."

Mr. DALGLISH, M.P., then gave " Lord Clyde
and his Companions in Arms." He said that the
toast fortunately did not require the eloquence of
the talented chairman to make it come home to
every heart. Sir A. Alison had told them that in
addition to the title of Queen of England, her most
gracious Majesty had added that of Empress of
India. (Hear.) He thought it would be wrong in
him to detain the assembly with any detailed state-
ment of the reasons why they should receive the
toast, with all the honours, for it was enough to
say that owing to the undaunted bravery of our
soldiers and the skill of their commanders, a most
treacherous mutiny had been suppressed, and India
had been retained for England—(cheers)—but on
w was
the present occasion he thought there aclaim
on them to drink the toast with redoubled
enthu-
siasm, for the gallant army that fought upon the
plains of Hindostan was commanded by a man born
They were all aware how
sinooGnlaasftgeorwhis arrival
lsin India- he organised, with
great care, an army which had performed such in-
comparable services for the country. He need not
allude to Lord Clyde's advance and successful
e°st oamguorcevet:
move-
ments, or to his achievements at Caswnehp, re or Luck-
now; but there were other men connected with
Glasgow who distinguished them
extent in India. Need he mention the name of the
gallant colonel, the son of their illustrious chair
man—(cheers)—who, havin g lost an arm in the cause
of his country, had since been more successful in
another field (laughter) having gained the
hand of one of their loveliest citizens ? (Loud cheers
and laughter, in which Sir A. Alison heartily
joined.) Neither would he allude to the gallant
Col. Kerr, who, alone with his unaided native
troops, had won such laurels on the field of battle ;
and to the son of their own townsman, Mr. Macnee.
(Cheers.) He therefore trusted that the toast which
he proposed would be received with all tho honours.
(Cheers.)
The toast was drunk with all the honours, the
band playing, " See the conquering hero comes."
The Rev. Principal BARCLAY proposed the next
toast—" Both Douses of Parliament "—which,
though not immediately connected with the occa-
sion on which they had met, was still a subject in
which every individual in the British empire was
more or less interested. (Hear, hear.) He, there-