Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1899 edition. Excerpt: ... ADDRESSES. REV. HENRY WARD BEEOHER. Address delivered before the Burns Club of New York at the Centennial Birthday of the Poet, Tuesday, 25th January, 1859. I Come upon your invitation, gentlemen of the Burns Club, friends and fellow-citizens, to celebrate with one half of the civilised world, and with the whole world of letters, the birth of a farmer's boy, who became a ploughman, a flaxdresser, an exciseman and gauger, and who was reputed also to have become a poet. One hundred years ago, January 25th, 1759, Agnes Brown Burness gave to the world her son, Robert Burns. The father and mother were Scotch. The son only took Scotland on his way into the whole world. While we allow Scotchmen suitable national pride in their chief poet, we cannot allow the world to be robbed of their right and interest in Burns. And yet there never was born to that land, so fertile in men, a truer Scotchman; and it is the peculiar admiration and glory of the man that, in spite of obscurity, bred to all the local influences, Scotch in bone, in muscle, in culture, and in dialect, he rose higher than the special and national, and achieved his glory in those elements which unite mankind and make all nations of one blood. While men of science are groping about the signs of eternal man, and debating B the origin and unity of races, a poet strikes the fundamental chords, and all races, peoples, and tongues hear, understand, and agree; so that the poet is, after all, the true ethnologist. The human heart is his harp, and he who knows how to touch that with skill belongs to no country, can be shut in by no language, nor sequestered by any age. He belongs to the world and to the race. The father of Burns, William Burness--the poet contracted the name when he..."
