The Sun.
London, England, 1859-02-10 00:00:00

theology into an imaginary conversation between a
hind and a panther; and Burns had put a philoso-
phical discussion upon social relations mto the
mouths of his dogs, Caesar and Luath. His Hal-
loween was a vivid description of lee . supersti-
tions, the memory of which, but fo, that poem,
might in time have been obliterated. One might
name his "Lament of Mary, Queen o: Scots, on the
return of Spring," because Carlisle was at one time
so fortunate as to be visited by Burns, and the sight
of the tower in which the unfortunate Princess
was confined might have awakened his poetical
sympathies. His poetry was sometimes effective in
producing some other object than mere admiration ;
his petition of Bruar Water for shade had led to
the planting of the banks of that stream, and to the
creation of some beautiful scenery. He had written
many martial poems, one of which had been sung
that night, and many tender odes and songs that
now find a home in almost all hearth. (Cheers.)
Other poets had sung of young love, but it re-
mained for Burns to describe love in its evening
glow, and to sing the wedded pair happily descend,
ing the hill of life. (Cheers.) But, perhaps, what
was most distinct in his poetry was his nationality,
and it was not to be wondered that he should
sing of freedom, for Scotland had never bowed under
the yoke of an invader. Scotland gloried in being
the only country which had never been subjugated
by a foreign invader. Romans, Saxons, Danes, and
Normans had successfully subdued and overrun the
more southern part of the island, but all that the
Romans, the conquerors of the world, ever attempted
was to bar the Scots out by that wonderful wall
which had been the admiration of antiquarians, and
which would, no doubt, next July engage the at-
tention of the members of the Archmological Insti-
tute who are then to be in Carlisle. (Hear, hear.)
The chairman then said that he had received an
appeal from the Rev. W. Buchanan, of Ayr, in
favour of the neices of Burns, the daughters of Mrs.
Begg, who only departed this life at an advanced
age, on the 4th of December last. On the present
occasion it might be ill-advised to press a matter of
business, but he hoped he might venture to direct
the attention of the company to that object. (Hear.)
He would, in conclusion, remark that if placed in a
higher position in life Burns would doubtless have
been a poet, probably a great one, but he would not
have had the opportunity of studying nature so
near its source, and, above all, he would not have
written in that language"of his native land, so full
of pith and feeling, (Mr. Howard sat down amidst
applause.)
Mr. AIKIN then, with much humour, recited
" Death and Dr. Hornbook," and Mr. DALY sang
" A man's a man for a' that."

The VICE-CHAIRMAN proposed " The memory of
the Poet's wife " (Jean Armour). He said they
were met to celebrate the memory of a great poet
and a man of genius. They had just done honour
to his well-earned fame, and they were now called
upon to consider him in his private and domestic
life--as a man, a husband, and a father. (Cheers.)
How fervently and truly he loved the partner of
all his joys and sorrows was well known to all of
us who had read his poems, some of which were
addressed to her, and formed no small part of that
world-wide celebrity which he had earned for him-
self. Though his life was a troubled one, and was
unfortunately extinguished amid the clouds of
adversity, to her were vouchsafed blessings of which
he had been deprived. She lived. to realise the
dearest. wish of a wife's and a parent's heart—she
lived to see and participate in the rising prosperity
of her family—she lived to realise the happiest
vision in the poet's dream—to find her husband's
name acknowledged by his countrymen. (Loud
cheers.) She lived to know that his memory was
cherished and enshrined in their grateful hearts,
and to feel that those errors which would never
have been noticed but for the splendour of the
shield—that though they might tarnish its bril-
liancy for a moment, were lost and obliterated in
the brightness and glory which illumined the
memory of the poet. (Loud cheers.) The Vice-
Chairman then gave " The memory of the Poet's
wife," which, like that of the poet, was drunk in
solemn silence.

Mr. DAVIDSON rose to propose the next toast,
the health of the two surviving sons of the poet—
Colonels William Nicol and James Glencairn Burns.
Though ill-qualified to do the toast the justice it
deserved, he had this claim to the honour of pro-
posing it, that he was personally acquainted with
both the gentlemen ; for he had. the pleasure some
years ago of spending a night with them in his
own house, and of hearing some of the finest
songs of the poet sung by James Glencairn,
then Major Burns. William Nicol in early youth
went out to India in the military service, and
was followed in a few years by his younger
brother, who got a cadetship in the same service.
A writer in a work called " The Land of Burns,"
(who he believed was Allan Cunningham), thus
spoke of the younger brother :

F " The first time I saw James Glencairn Burns, the poet's
third son, was a day or so after his father's funeral, when,
accompanied by his brothers Robert and William, he was
on his way up the streets of Dumfries to the town school.
The black dresses, the lawn weepers on their jacket cuffs,
their extreme youth, and the desolate look of the poor
orphans made an impression too deep to be effaced. The
next time I saw him was in my own house in London, when
he called, accompanied by the Ettrick Shepherd. Many
years, and most of them stirring ones, had intervened ;
James had served, not unnoticed, in India, and returned to
see his mother and friends with the rank of Captain. The
East seemed to have made little impression upon either con-
stitution or looks. I had heard this before through Sir John
Malcolm, who loved him because he was a worthy officer,
as well as the son of a great poet, and had during his com-
mand in India shown that he desired to honour him. I
found him pleasing and unaffected, with his father's love of
song, and his mother's skill in singing, and with a touch of
the latter more than the former—for I knew them both—in
his looks. He told me he had been at Abbotsford, where Sir
Walter Scott treated him with uncommon kindness, and
asked him to sing one of his father's songs ; he sang Of a'
the airts the wind can blew,' which made the eyes of his
illustrious entertainer moist. Neither did the' boy of Burns'
leave those halls—so soon to become silent and dark—with-
out his meed of song from no undistinguished minstrel. In
the East, wherever he went, he found his father's fame be-
fore him. The son of Burns was welcomed by all, and by
none more than the Marquis of Hastings, whose lady was
of the North, and allied, too, to names of whom the young
soldier's father had sung with his usual tenderness."
Both brothers rose to honourable distinction and
rank, and returned home some fifteen years ago,
and have since been living in that "glorious inde-
pendence" so much prized and celebrated by
their father, who had he lived to see his sons rise
to high military rank and to gain the love
and respect as they have done of all who have the
pleasure of their acquaintance, he would have been
a proud and happy man. It would have raised him
indeed

"O'er all the ills o' life victorious."

That the poet was a fond and loving father, and
prepared to make every honourable sacrifice for the
sake of his wife and children, we have abundant
proof. In his epistle to the Rev. Dr. Blacklock, he
says—

" I hae a wife and three wee laddies,
Wha maim hae brose and bits o' duddios,
Ye ken yoursel my heart right proud is,
I needna vaunt.
But sued besoms, thraw saugh woodier
Before they want."
And then again, when he was appointed to the
Excise—

" Searehin' auld wives' barrels,
Och ho, the day I
1,,,1A stain my laurels;
mlßtiflailiaMS say P
These =win things ca'd wives and weans
Wad muve the very hearts o' stanes I"
The subjects of the toast were men high and
honourable in their character, gentle, pleasing, and
unassuming in their manners, and one of them, at
least, sang an excellent song ; in fact, their noble-
minded father would have been proud of them.
They both inherited a share of their father's bene-
volence of heart—for if ever man was brimfull of
the milk of human sympathy it was the poet, their
father. All the beauteous and helpless things in
nature, whether animate or inanimate, were em-
braced Within the overflowings of his heft' rt. Need
he refer to "The Mouse—wee, sleekit, cowerin, timo-
rous beastie,"
pet Daisy;' "The
ewe, wounded hare," " Poor Mail ic,"
.the author's " His auld mare Maggie,"
"The Mountain Even the arch enemy of
mankind claims
hand "
sympathy. After showing off
with a master's
e'y—teauk waetehl ,lgu manyihdt loki.
?felt
inmh.:eins
Ben, evil
thus
~ concludesoßuwtafdar;
Ye tali= might, I dinna
Still hae a stake •
I'm was to think upon you den, '
E'en for yourha sake
threea,ke,
of the
He (Mr. Davidson) might add that the statement
made in several of the papers lately t
poet's sons are still living,
about two
g, is incorrect. Robert, the
eldest, himself a poet, died in Dumfries'
years ago. He now, therefore, claimed a bumper
to the healths of Colonels William Nicol and James
Glencairn Bunts. (Drunk with applause.)
" Willie brewed a peck o' nmut," was here sung
by Mr. AIKIN.
Mr. BERTRAM then proposed the health of the
Chairman, expressing his general respect for Mr.
Howard as an English gentleman which was en-
tertained by those present, and by the people of the
sstmt in which he lives and where he is so well
own. Burns, the speaker said, had been declared
to have begun his career as a Jacobite and ended it
as a Jacobin, and certainly no man more strongly
entertained or more freely expressed contempt for
any claims that mere rank and money could set up;
but throughout his life and many parts of his
Poetry be had warmly expressed the admiration
with which he regarded men who, like Mr. Howard,
adornedi their descent and their station by the high
i
()now of their characters and the cultivation of

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