she was the nearest representative and closest link to him, her independent spirit would not allow her to obtrude her personality on the public.

The lineal descendants of the Poet's eldest son, Robert, became extinct two years ago with the death of Mrs Burns Thomas, and now it is only the James Glencairn Burns branch of the Poet's family that survives. But happily there are no signs of

it becoming extinct. There remains Miss Annie B. Burns, granddaughter of Burns, and she, with her niece, Miss Daisy Barns Hutchinson, continues to reside at Cheltenham. Then, in the fourth generation, there are the late Mrs Sarah Burns Hutchinson's children (1) Mrs Burns Scott, of Adelaide; (2) Robert Burns Hutchinson, of Langley, Vancouver; (3) Mrs Gowring, wife of the Principal of St. Bede's School, Eastbourne; and (4) Miss Daisy Burns Hutchinson of Cheltenham. Of the fifth generation there are six members-two young sons and three daughters of Robert Burns Hutchinson, and one young son of Mrs Gowring. I feel sure that admirers of the writings of Burns, and those who love his memory, will extend to the surviving descendants of the Poet their kindliest thoughts and warm-hearted sympathy in their recent bereavement.

J. LEIPER GEMMILL.

We cordially endorse every word which Mr Gemmill has written. We also knew the estimable old lady, and for many years kept up a close correspondence with her. Her letters to us number over sixty, interesting extracts from which may form the subject of a future article in the Chronicle.-[ED.]

FOREIGN TRIBUTES TO BURNS.

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THE fame of Burns extends far beyond his native land; it is not even bounded by the limits of the British Empire. Our Poet has a world-wide reputation, which is not diminishing, but daily increasing as the Scot penetrates to all parts of the globe and carries the immortal "Poems" with him. The most national of poets, Burns is at the same time one of the most cosmopolitan, for has he not sung of home and love and freedom-sentiments which are common to humanity, and which find responses in the hearts of men everywhere? Appealing to many of the highest and best features in Scottish history and character as Burns did, he struck notes, which, while national in their form, are universal in their essence. The author of "A Man's a Man for a' that" needs only to be known to become a favourite in every land. Below are collected a few of the best tributes which notable men and women of various European nationalities have paid to Burns and his genius. The collection lays no claim to completeness; it merely lays the foundation for an anthology of the finest tributes of foreigners to our Bard.

FRENCH.

Alas for the cruelty of Fate! the days of the Bard were but few; scarce had the daughters of song woven the wreath of glory for his brow, when his country had lost him for ever!

Burns was more than half a musician.

PIERRE BARRIEU, 1823.

STENDHAL (MARIE-HENRI BEYLE), 1824.

Burns is of that family of writers whose power reaches the heart: Pectus est, quod facit disertos. With him there is no literary preoccupation, none of the beauties of the room; he lives in the pure air amid Nature. He is not one of those pastoral muses who only visit the country on fine days to recoup

themselves after all their luxuriant winter dissipations; courtly muses, who only sing of Nature in her pleasant garb; whose forests, like those of Virgil, are dignified as a consul; who transfer their amours from the city to bring them back to the shams of a gravelled walk and an artificial river.

LEON DE WAILLY, 1843.

Beranger, the Burns of France, used to say that this ["A Man's a Man for a' that"] was a song, not for an age, but for eternity.

J. CUTHBERT HADDEN, Notes on the Songs of Burns.

At last, after so many years, we escape from the measured declamation— we hear a man's voice! Much better, we forget the voice in the emotion which it expresses, we feel this motion reflected in ourselves, we enter into relations with a soul. Then form seems to fade away and disappear: I will say that this is the great feature of modern poetry; Burns has reached it seven or eight times.

II. A. TAINE, 1863.

Burns had nothing to learn and nothing to unlearn; he shot up as spontaneously as the daisy of his own mountains.

EDMOND SCHERER, 1881.

Where Bertrand strives, above all, to be picturesque, Burns [in "The Cottar's Saturday Night "] shows himself—in addition to this--cordial, moral, Christian, patriotic. His episode of Jenny introduces and personifies the chastity of emotion; the Bible, read aloud, casts a religious glow over the whole scene. Then come those lofty thoughts upon the greatness of old Scotland, which is based upon such home scenes as these. Sic fortis Etruria crevit. C. A. SAINTE-BEUVE.

Weigh his errors, his faults, as heavily as you like, the scale containing the pure gold out balances that containing the base lead. Admiration increases in proportion as you examine his fine qualities.

AUGUSTE ANGellier, 1893.

It may safely be said that more touching, sublime poetry than that of Burns was never written.

PAUL BLOUET ("MAX O'RELL ").

I admire, rather do I love, Robert Burns passionately; and, however ignorant I may be of the language in which he sings of his violet heaths and the blue eyes of his Jenny, still I always have his verses near at hand on the

shelf of the true poets, poets of Nature, near to our Pierre Dupont, singer of strawberries and fine oxen :

"I have two fine oxen in my stable,

Two fine white oxen, flecked with red."

But the Scotch bagpipe has more power and resonance than the pipe of Pierre Dupont of Lyons; and, in addition, your Robert Burns lived a hundred years ALPHONSE DAUDET, 1896.

too soon.

This noble, sincere, powerful spirit-powerful, because he has drawn from his native soil the inspiration of his songs and the patriotic sentiment of his writings.

JULES CLARETIE, 1896.

What little I know of Burns gives me the idea of a great poet-truly sincere and very savoury; something like our Pierre Dupont, but with far more art and power.

JULES LEMAITRE, 1896.

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 ADAM, 1896.

GERMAN.

We esteem this highly-praised Robert Burns amongst the first poetical spirits which the past century has produced.

GOETHE, 1829.

The total impression of his poems is, and remains always, that of a candid, healthy, tender, fresh and mirthful soul-of a fine, free, reflecting and clear mind.

ADOLPH WAGNER, 1835.

Millions of yet unborn generations will delight in the poems, in which he has made such admirable use of the material entrusted to him in the Scottish dialect, working it out into such exquisite forms in songs that will certainly be aere perennus.

J. G. KOHL, 1844.

Neither Pope with his smooth verses, nor Lord Bolingbroke with his sceptical wit, nor Dr Johnson amid his worshippers, gave forth the first truly

original note which announced a new phase in the poetry of Great Britain; from the Banks of the Doon, out of a cottage in Scotland, rose the wood-lark who uttered it.

JOHANNES SCHErr, 1874.

minstrel.

The manly and national trumpet-notes of the Scotch peasant-
ALOIS BRANDL, 1886.

I find in Burns that Celtic fire and power of imagination, that humournow delicate, now light, now grotesque-but above all that wonderful eye for Nature, which was peculiar to the Celtic mind.

KUNO MEYER.

ITALIAN.

For the last thirty years no country has produced poets who have understood the language of solitude, and transfused the very soul of Nature into their verse like Burns, Crabbe, Wordsworth.

This very great Scottish poet.

MAZZINI, 1829.

GARIBALDI, 1865.

Such his life, and such his verses, in which beat all the affections, all human sentiments-love, enthusiasm, compassion, indignation; and all speak the language of truth.

GUISEPPE CHIARINI, 1886.

The vigorous and most original poetry of the Bard of Scotland.
OLIVIERO BACCARINI, 1894.

Robert Burns appears to me to have laid open in the poetry of his country both doors and windows to the breath of revolution. In rough outline, in idyllic emotion, in sarcasm and in tenderness, in blasphemy and in prayer, in negation and in aspiration, he seems to conjure up the ethics and æsthetics of a new philosophy.

GIOSUE CARDUCCI, 1896.

As for Burns, in spite of the sentiments and passions which belong to his period, he has a certain delicacy and refinement which seem to be his very own, and there are in some of his lyrics, in some bits of dialect, in a certain feeling of the Scottish soil, qualities which excite the lively admiration of a