art which preserves all arts! To what end the theology of Dr. Blair, and the philosophy of Dugald Stewart, the friends and associates of Burns at Edinburgh. Where, indeed, did Burns hear of his honored Ramsay and Ferguson but in the Press of Scotland. To him it is true books could never teach the use of books, for he was too original for this ;—but he lead Shakspeare, Addison, Thompson, Young and others and profited by what he read. He was the Shakspeare of Scotland, and to his native land what the Bard of Avon, Milton, Wadsworth and Byron were to England, only less cultivated, patient and refined. Just what Moore and Goldsmith were to Ireland; Goethe and Schiller to Germany; Longfellow and Whittier to New England; Bryant and Halleck to New York, was Burns as the poet of Scotland. But he was patriot, as well as poet, and a philosopher as well as the rustic ploughman, and poor but honest exciseman. As a lover of Bruce and Wallace he says: "Scottish prejudice was poured into my veins, which will boil there till the floodgates of life are shut in eternal rest." He knelt at the tomb of Sir John Graham, the friend of Wallace, and prayed fervently over the hole in a whinstone where Robert the Bruce fixed his own standard on the banks of Bannockburn. He kneeled, too, on the banks of the Tweed and on bended knees, repeated the closing stanzas on the Cotter's Saturday Night, which began with:

"O, Scotia, my dear, my native soil!

For whom my warmest wish to heaven is sent

Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil

Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content."

I have called him philosopher, too, for what divine ever taught a higher wisdom than this:

"But pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flow'r, the bloom is shed:
Or like the snowflake in the river-

A moment white-then melts for ever;

Or like the Borealis race,

That flits ere you can point the place;
Or like the rainbows lovely form
Evanishing amiu the storm."

Burns made the discovery, too, that men differed in polish and not in grain, and this was true of him whether as in the beginning he toiled at the plow, flourished with Lady Dunlop or the Earl of Glencairne at Edinburgh, or served as exciseman at Dumfries on the paltry pay of fifty pounds a year, with deductions for the time that he was too ill to toil. For such a man "'twas not the whole of life to live, nor all

of death to die."

But let me close, and as you have honored that sixth sense the Press, let me add to it the truth that the Pross is only free when it is free from all that is licentious, and only noble when it instructs and improves mankind.

"He is the free man whom the truth makes free,

The last speaker has alluded to the gentleman to whose exertions especially we owe this charming banquet, Mr. Andrew H. H. Dawson. I am sure that I should express your wishes, as well as my own, if I should so far deviate from the prescribed order of proceedings, as now to ask him to speak for himself.

MR. DAWSON said:

Mr. President and Ladies and Gentlemen:

I suppose this call is intended for a surprise. It is not a surprise; I was expecting it. A friend warned me last evening that this prauk was in pickle for me. The object of a surprise is generally to delight one. I am not delighted. Last evening when I was told, something, I would have to say, I at once went to thinking what I would say, and after losing more or less sleep over my cogitations, I finally concluded I had got a speech that would do, cut and dried, when lo, to my painful discomfiture, I find the orators of the evening who have gone before me, have already said what I intended to say, and left me out in the cold. Yes sir, Boaz and his reapers have been here to-night, and the ripe harvest

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of golden thoughts that was waving here when this banquet opened, have been swept by the sharp sickles of genius, out of the field of discussion, [Applause.] and I have been left nothing to say, nothing but dry stubble against which to fret my dull blade. True it is, that the humble role of the gleaner is open to me, and I suppose inasmuch as in the olden time, away back in the dim distance of centuries, that good and gentle, bright and beautiful being who so tenderly loved Naomi, that when she bade her return to her people, she threw her beautiful white arms around her neck and from the fullness of her heart sobbingly exclaimed entreat me not to leave thee or to return from following after thee, for whither thou goest I will go; and where thou lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou diest, will I die and there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me, and more, also, if aught but death, part thee and me." Inasmuch, I say, as the noble little Moabitish woman who made that great speech was herself, in the fields of Boaz, a gleaner, perhaps I ought to feel that even that position is not without its share of honor. [Applause.] Especially in such a field as this, in such a field as the history of Robert Burns presents, where if only one golden grain of thought, that might be lost or overlooked is saved, planted and tilled, it may be made to produce and in the revolution of seasons, reproduce, until in the lapse of years a whole crop of blessings may spring from that one grain alone. [Applause.] Sublime results often proceed from modest beginnings. Sir, did you ever travel in the West, upon that mighty monarch stream, the old father of waters, and have you not, while looking down into his turbid waves, as they roll on to the sea, asked yourself "from whence do these waters come, and whither do they go?" Would you know? Go you then four thousand long miles far away into the bosom of the wilderness, and there, at the foot of a nameless little hill, you will find gushing a spring, from whence runneth a rivulet, over which the weary hunter steps in his careless wanderings, and from the ripple of whose crystal waters the

timid fawn turneth not aside; but pursue it onward and downward, and you will find it widens, deepens and swells, until a nation's wealth floats upon its surface, and the hardy mariner turns pale at the roar of its waves. And thus may it be with one of Burn's noble sentiments or great thoughts, born, though it was of an obscure ploughman's mind or heart, as it rolls on down along the channel of ages, it too, may be made to widen, deepen and swell, until the happiness of millions may float upon its sparkling surface, and the miserable freebooters and buccaneers who infest the high seas of independent thought and fraternal feeling, may be made to tremble and turn pale at the musical roar of its healing waters (applause). The mission of serving mankind, however, is often a thankless one, and those who go forward to do good frequently have to encounter in life's highways and by-ways, snarling cynics, ever ready to impugn the best motives, ridicule the happiest proprieties, and prevent salutary results. Even while I was co-operating with others in attempting to get up this dinner, I was met by insolent impertinence, challenging my right to take an interest in the memory of Burns. One "snapper-up of unconsidered trifles" pertly remarked to me, "Why do you take such an interest in Burns' memory ? you're no Scotchman! you was not born in Scotland?" True, I was not born in Scotland, but nevertheless I do claim to be a Scotchman. I was not only not born in Scotland; I never was even in Scotland. I never gazed with the naked eye upon her grand old mountain crags, crowned with coronals of light or veiled with curtains of mist. I never heard the shrill whistle her lowland shepherds send athwart her moors to call back to their sentinel posts their truant flock-dogs; or the many voices of her babbling brooks as they go laughing and singing on their winding way to the sea. I have never visited the scenes immortalized by the prowess of her valor, illumined by the corruscations of her genius or dedicated to the altars of her hospitality; but nevetheless, sir, by the dint of an imagination's strength, intensely Scotch, I have almost realized that I was standing on Scotland's sacred soil, guarding against the in

trusive stranger's resentful violence, her glen's emblamatic thistles, or tending with affection's hand, her mountain's modest daisies. Many a time and oft, in day-dreams, have I wandered along the shores of Loch-Katrine, stood upon the summit of Ben-Lomond, lingered upon the field of Bannockburn and knelt at the tomb of Robert Bruce; and never did I, for one moment feel, while under the glow of the enthusiasm with which such associations ever flushed my bosom, that I had to wait for the stammering tongue of tradition. to tell me that I was a Scotchman; (applause,) sir, the loud throbbings of my own swelling heart always announced to me on such occasions that it was a Scotch heart, like

Something whispers in the soul

It must forever be,

And travelers hear billows roll

Before they reach the sea."-(Applause.)

I have studied, sir, the great events of Scotch history and the minuter details of Scotch statistics, drank in the sweet strains of their kindling bards and the ravishing rhapsodies of their mellow medleys, until my soul is as full of Scotch facts and fancies, pride and prejudices, as my heart is of Scotch life and love. So literally Scottish are all my tastes, sympathies and impulses, that whenever I have occasion to instance an example of illustrious worth or wisdom, valor or virtue, to fire ambition or challenge emulation, I invariably and involuntarily turn first to Scotland, and I am proud to boast, I never fail to find it there (applause).

In the roseate realms of romance I have pointed to the "Wizard of the North's" magical wand (applause); in jurisprudence to Mansfield's able adjudications; in history to Macauley's perspicuous pen; in arms to Havelock's shining sword; in minstrelsy to the ploughman poet's mellifluous muse (applause); in literature and science to constellations, the light of which radiates round the world and everywhere, captivates with its countless charms, the lovers of profound research and sparkling thought (applause). Don't tell me then, that because I did not happen to make my first blunder