WOMAN'S PRAISE OF BURNS.

M

EN of all classes, creeds, and countries-as has been shown in recent issues of the Burns Chronicle-have paid the highest tributes to the genius and character of Scotland's Bard. Statesmen, soldiers, poets, critics, divines, men of affairs and men of letters, have all united to sound the praise of Robert Burns. But what have representative writers of the gentler sex had to say of our Poet? The world knows how sweetly Burns has sung the charms of womankind. None of the poets has given us such a gallery of fair women as we have in the songs of Scotia's Bard. An examination of the writings of our leading poetesses and other lady writers brings to light some remarkable tributes paid by women to our Poet. Women of his own time and women of later days, women of high degree and of low estatenot only Scotswomen, but women of England, Ireland, France, and America-have alike expressed some of the highest appreciations of Burns, not only as a poet and singer, but for the manliness and tenderness of his nature. From Queen Victoria on the throne of the British Empire to Janet Hamilton, the humble poetess of Coatbridge, women have been charmed by, and have written in terms of the highest admiration of Burns and his immortal verses. Here is a somewhat random collection of some of these feminine tributes :

FRIENDS AND CONTEMPORARIES.

My brother was not at all what most folks thought him-he was all his life a man who feared God in his heart.-Mrs BEGG (Isabella Burns)

He was sent to speak truth, surcharged with a divine mission; he poured it forth out of his great loving heart sweetly, tenderly, man

fully into God's earth, despite kings, priests, or louts.-SARAH CAMERON, New Zealand (Grand-daughter of the Poet).

I have met a man from London who tells me he would never grudge a journey to Scotland, had it done nothing but made him acquainted with Burns's poems.-Mrs DUNLOP of Dunlop.

The most royally courteous of all mankind.-Mrs BASIL MONTAGU.

If others have climbed more successfully to the heights of Par nassus, none certainly ever outshone Burns in the charms-the sorcery, I would almost call it-of fascinating conversation, the spontaneous eloquence of social argument, or the unstudied poignancy of brilliant repartee. Mrs MARIA RIDdell.

Burns was a fine haun' at pleasing bairns;

mony's

the time I have seen him tak' them on his knee and tell them a story. -Mr HUTCHISON (Janet Meikle).

Burns micht be a very clever lad, but he certainly was regardless; as to the best of my belief he never took three half-mutchkins in my house all his life.-NANSE TINNOCK.

Burns has looked at Nature, in her wild and rustic operations, with his own eyes, and he is particularly happy in his winter landscapes. -ANNA SEWARD.

I have been much pleased with the poems of the Scottish ploughman. -Mrs BARBA ULD.

Scotia from rude affliction shield thy Bard,

His heaven-taught numbers fame herself will guard.

-HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS.

To hear thy song all ranks desire,

Sae weel you strike the dormant lyre;

Apollo with poetic fire

Thy breast does warm,

And critics silently admire

Thy art to charm.

-JANET LITTLE (" The Scottish Milkmaid ").

But when he sung to the attentive plain
The humble virtues of the patriarch swain,
His evening worship, and his social meal,
And all a parent's pious heart can fee. ;
To genuine worth we bow submissive down,
And wish the cottar's lowly shed our own:
With fond regard our native land we view,
Its clustered hamlets, and its mountains blue,
Our "virtuous populace," a nobler boast
Than all the wealth of either India's coast.

-Mrs GRANT of Lag an.

We talked of Burns and of the prospect he must have had, perhaps from his own door, of Skiddaw and his companions, indulging ourselves in the fancy that we might have been personally known to each other, and he have looked upon those objects with more pleasure for our sakes.-DOROTHY WORDsworth.

PRAISE OF QUEENS.

The Queen [Victoria] sat down to spin at a nice Scotch wheel, while I read Burns to her-" Tam o' Shanter" and A Man's a Man for a' That," her favourite.-Letters of NORMAN MACLEOD.

Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled,
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led,
Scots, your Burns is not yet dead,
His wondrous song has ne ver fled !

-CARMEN SYLVA (Queen of Roumania).

IRISH TRIBUTES.

How little did the exhausted mother, when she thanked God that a man was born into the world," imagine what a strong yet tender heart beat within the shelter of that little bosom, or what fearful throes and lofty imaginings were cradled in the head that nestled on her bosom !-Mrs S. C. HALL.

They the lines of "Ae Fond Kiss "] are the Alpha and Omeja of feeling, and contain the essence of an existence of pain and pleasure distilled into one burning drop.-Mr3 ANNA JAMESON.

Ah! who would say the minstrel failed his mission to fulfil-
Sought rest inglorious on his lees, or let his harp lie stil!?

He laid him with the early dead, for brief his span of life,

Yet stored the world with deathless song whilst battling midst its strife. -SARAH PARKER DOUGLAS ("The Irish Girl ").

FRENCH WOMEN'S PRAISE.

In the whole of English literature there is no more beautiful tribute than his rendered to the virtues of the peasant, nor any finer description of labour's rewards.-Mme. P. JULETTE ADAMS.

What higher place can we give to Robert Burns than that which he occupies by divine right in every heart in which the love of nature and the sense of song are present ?-LOUISE de la Ramee (“ Ouida ”).

I set your Burns with Milton as the two greatest poets of Great Britain.-M. BETHAM-EDWARDS.

AMERICAN TRIBUTES.

Since Adam, there has been none that approached nearer fitness to stand up before God and angels in the naked majesty of manhood than Robert Burns; but there was a serpent in his field also!MARGARET FULLER (Countess Ossoli).

The bold lyric of Burns ["Scots Wha Hae"] is but an inspired kind of version of the real address which Bruce is said to have made to his followers; and whoever reads it will see that its power lies not in appeal to brute force, but to the highest elements of our nature— the love of justice, the sense of honour, and to disinterestedness, selfsacrifice, courage unto death.-HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.

In the villages where he dwelt there seems to be no man, no child, who does not apparently know every detail of the life he lived there, nearly a hundred years ago.-HELEN HUNT JACKSON.

We saw him as from Nature's soul

His own drew draughts of joy o'erflowing;

The plover's voice, the briar-rose,

The tiny harebell lightly growing,

The wounded hare that passed him by,
The timorous mousie's ruined dwelling
The cattle cowering from the blast,

The dying sheep her sorrow telling-
All touched the heart that kept so strong
Its sympathy with humbler being,
And saw in simplest things of life

The poetry that waits the seeing.

-AGNES MAULE MACHAR,

Nearly a century has elapsed since the Peasant Poet was laid in his last resting-place, yet to-day the interest in his tomb is world-wide, and up to the present time great men are writing of his life and lamenting his untimely death.-Mrs A. A. WELLINGTON.

CENTENARY VERSES.

We hail this morn

A century's noblest birth—

A Poet, peasant-born,

Who more of Fame's immortal dower

Unto his country brings

Than all her kings

-ISA CRAIG KNOX (Prize Poem).

No sweeter music poet's hand hath wrung
From Scotia's lyre-no son of genius sung
In loftier strains-no patriot's battle-cry
Like his can nerve the arm when foes are nigh.

-Mrs JANET HAMILTON (The Blind Poetess).

But Master still of Time dead BURNS shall be,
His words still watchwords for the brave and free-
His songs, still love-songs, to the young and fond-
His fame still linking with the time beyond.
Much hath been lost within the vanished years,
But not His power o'er human smiles and tears;
And when the Hundredth Year agai returns,
More shall be lost-but not the name of Burns.

-HON, CAROLINE NORTON