s," and his graceful flights of oratory
were received with cheers, and calls for "More! More!" which the
presiding officer, General John S. Tyler, quieted with the remark:
"Mr. Emerson begs to be excused, not because the well of gushing
waters is exhausted, but because, in the kindness of his heart, he
thinks he ought to leave room for gentlemen who are to succeed him."
Willis, writing later of the festival, said of this speech, "Why, in
that large and convivially excited audience, there was not, while he
spoke, a wandering eye--not a pulse or a breath that was not held
absolutely captive. Wherein lies the wonderful spell?"]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--I do not know by what untoward
accident it has chanced--and I forbear to inquire--that, in this
accomplished circle, it should fall to me, the worst Scotsman of all, to
receive your commands, and at the latest hour, too, to respond to the
sentiment just offered, and which, indeed, makes the occasion. But I am
told there is no appeal, and I must trust to the inspiration of the
theme to make a fitness which does not otherwise exist.

Yet, sir, I heartily feel the singular claims of the occasion. At the
first announcement, from I know not whence, that the twenty-fifth of
January was the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, a
sudden consent warned the great English race, in all its kingdoms,
colonies and states, all over the world, to keep the festival. We are
here to hold our parliament with love and poesy, as men were wont to do
in the Middle Ages. Those famous parliaments might or might not have had
more stateliness, and better singers than we--though that is yet to be
known--but they could not have better reason.

I can only explain this singular unanimity in a race which rarely acts
together--but rather after their watchword, each for himself--by the
fact that Robert Burns, the poet of the middle class, represents in the
mind of men to-day that great uprising of the middle class against the
armed and privileged minorities--that uprising which worked politically
in the American and French Revolutions, and which, not in governments so
much as in education and in social order, has changed the face of the
world. In order for this destiny, his birth, breeding and fortune were
low. His organic sentiment was absolute independence, and resting, as it
should, on a life of labor. No man existed who could look down on him.
They that looked in