Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
These few remarks we cannot consider as inappropriate to our present
subject. We have once more been joyful spectators of a truly national
gathering. Once more we have seen Scotsmen, of every grade and degree,
assemble together without a tinge of party purpose, to do honour to the
memory of a poet who sprang from the ranks of the people, and who was
heart and soul a Scotsman in his feelings, his inspiration, and, it may
be, in his errors and his prejudices also. It was a stirring and
exciting spectacle, such as no other country could have exhibited--to
behold peer and senator, poet and historian and peasant--the great and
the small, the lettered and the simple of the land--unite, after fifty
years of silence, in deep and sincere homage to the genius of one humble
man. Nor did they assemble there because his genius was greater than
God, in his bounty, had bestowed upon others, but because he had used it
for the glory and exaltation of his country; because he loved her with
an ardour the most vivid and extreme; because he had shed the light
entrusted to his charge both on the lofty dwelling and on the lowly
hearth, but most brightly and cheeringly upon the latter, for that was
his peculiar charge. We feel assured that the events of that day, and
the sentiments which were then inspired and uttered, will produce a
marked effect upon the disposition of the country at large. It seemed as
if all classes had spontaneously assembled to join hands above the grave
of Robert Burns, and then and there to renew the vow of enduring
reconciliation and love.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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