The ground has the peaceful character that belongs to this town;—no lofty crags, no glittering cataracts;—but I hold that every part of Nature is handsome when not deformed by bad Art. Bleak sea-rocks and sea-downs and blasted heaths have their own beauty; and though we make much ado in our praises of Italy or Andes, Nature makes not so much difference. The morning, the moonlight, the spring day, are magical painters, and can glorify a meadow or a rock. But we must look forward also, and make ourselves a thousand years old; and when these acorns, that are falling at our feet, are oaks overshadowing our children in a remote century, this mute green bank will be full of history: the good, the wise and great will have left their names and virtues on the trees; heroes, poets, beauties, sanctities, benefactors, will have made the air timeable and articulate. And hither shall repair, to this modest spot of God’s earth, every sweet and friendly influence; the beautiful night and beautiful day will come in turn to sit upon the grass. Our use will not displace the old tenants. The well-beloved birds will not sing one song the less, the high-holding woodpecker, the meadow-lark, the oriole, robin, purple finch, bluebird, thrush and red-eyed warbler, the heron, the bittern will find out the hospitality and protection from the gun of this asylum, and will seek the waters of the meadow; and in the grass, and by the pond, the locust, the cricket and the hyla, shall shrilly play. We shall bring hither the body of the dead, but how shall we catch the escaped soul? Here will burn for us, as the oath of God, the sublime belief. I have heard that death takes us away from ill things, not from good. I have heard that when we pronounce the name of man, we pronounce the belief of immortality. All great natures delight in stability; all great men find eternity affirmed in the promise of their faculties. Why is the fable of the Wandering Jew agreeable to men, but because they want more time and land to execute their thoughts in? Life is not long enough for art, nor long enough for friendship. The evidence from intellect is as valid as the evidence from love. The being that can share a thought and feeling so sublime as confidence in truth is no mushroom. Our dissatisfaction with any other solution is the blazing evidence of immortality. XXII ROBERT BURNS SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE CELEBRATION OF THE BURNS CENTENARY, BOSTON JANUARY 25, 1859 “His was the music to whose tone The common pulse of man keeps time In cot or castle’s mirth or moan, In cold or sunny clime. Praise to the bard! his words are driven, Like flower-seeds by the far winds sown, Where’er, beneath the sky of heaven, The birds of fame have flown.” HALLECK. ROBERT BURNS