The Arkansas banner., 1844-11-06
To believe with Wordsworth, that

ness, and danger compassed round," scared ''beyond this visible dinrnal sphere," and whose song was of mercy and judgment, have men wisely resolved to dwell only on
 what is pure and high, and cognate with their thoughts of heaven. Still, as we keep descending from height to height in the re- gions of song, we desire to regard with love the genius that beautifes wherever 1t settles down; and, if pity will steal in for human misfortunes, or for human frailties reproach, our love suffers no abatement, and religious men feel that there is piety in pilgrimage to such honored graves. So feel we now at this commemoration. For our poet we now claim the privilege, at once bright and aus tere, of death. We feel that our Burns IS brought within the justification of all cele- brations of human names; and that, Ill thus honoring his memory, we virtuously exer- else the imaginative rights of enthusiasm owned by every people that has produced it's great men.
 And with more especial propriety do we claim this justice i'll our triumphal celebra- ton of poets, who, like Burns, were led by the character of their minds to derive the matter and impulse of their song, in strict CT sense, from themselves. For they have laid bare to all eyes many of their own weak nesses, at the side of their higher and pufer aspirations. Unreserved children of sheer fly, by the very open heartednes which IS one great cause of their commanding power, and contagiously difiuses every jealous af- lection originating in their nobility of nature by this grown to excess, made negligent of instinctye self defence, and needless Of mlsconstruction, or overcome by mportunate and clingng temptations-to what charges have they not been exposed from that prone ness to dsparage judgments so common Tn little minds For such judgments are easy indeed to the very lowest understandings, and regard things that are visible to eyes that may seldom have commenced with things that are above. But they who know Burns as we know him, know that by this some times unregulated and unguarded sympathy with all appertaining to his kind, and espe- cially to his own order, he was enabled to receive into his himself all modes of their simple, but not undversiied life, so that his poetry murmurs their loves and joys from a thousand fountains. And suppose-which was the case-that this unguarded sympa- thy, this quick sensibity, and this vivid ca pacity ofllappiness which the moment brings, and the Grankness of impulse, and the strength of desire, and the warmth of blood, which made him what he greatly is, which have been fire and music in his song, and man. hood, and courage, and endurance, and lhde- pendence in his life, have at times betrayed or overmastered him-to turn against him all this seli-paintng and seIt-reveaing, is 1t not ungraleiul, barbarous, inhuman Can he be indeed true lover of his kind, who would record in judgment against such a man words that have escaped him in the fer yor of the pleading designed to uphold great causes dear to humanity ?-who would ig- nobly strike the selt-disarmed? scornfully in- suit him who, kneeling at the Mures2 con- lessional, whispers secrets that take wings and fly abroad to the uttermost parts of the earth Can they be lovers of the people who do so2 who find it in their hearts thus to think and speak, and write of Robert Burns He who has reconciled poverty 10 its lot, toil to it's taskwork, care to it's bur den-nay, would say cven-grief to its grave? And by one Immortal Song has sanctiied for ever the poor mans Colby such picture as only genius, in the inspir- ing power of piety, could have painted l; has given enduring life to the image-how tender and how true! of the Happy Night passing by sweet transition from this worky world, into the Hallowed Day, by Gods ap- pointment breathing heavenly calm over all Christian regions in their rest-nowhere elss SD proloundly-and may 1t never be broken as over the hills and valleys of our beloved, and yet religious land
 It cannot be said that the best biographers of Burns, and his best critics, have not done, or desired to do, justice to his character as well as to his genius and, according as the truth has been more entirely and fearlessly spoken, has he heappeard the nober and nohler man. All our best poets, too, have exultingly sung the worth, while they mourned the fate of him, the brightest of the brotherhood But above, and below, and round about all that they have been uttering has all along been heard a voice, which they who know how to listen for it can hear, and which has pro- nounced decision in his favor not to be reversed; for on earth it cannot be carried tq a higher tribunal. 4 voice heard of old on great national emergencies, when it struck terror into the hearts of tyrants, who quaked, and quarled, and quilted for ave our land be- fore "the unconquered Caledonian spear''-- nor, since our union with noblest England, ever slack to join with hers and feryid Firms sons, the thrice-repeated cry by which battle fields are cleared; but happier, far napier to hear, in its low deep tone-of peace, For then il is like the sound of distant waterfalls the murmur of summer woods, or inc sea rolling in it's rest. mean the Voice of the People ofScotland the Voice of her Peasantry and her Trades-of all who earn their bread by the sweat of their brow-her Working Men.
 presume not to draw their character. But this much will say, that in the long run they know whom it is fitting they should honor and love.
 They will not be dictated to in their choice of the names that with them shall be house. hold words. Never, at any period of their history, have they been lightly moved but, when moved, their meaning was not to be