Burns.—1788.
From Count d'Aranda to Robert Burns,—from the rich and titled minister, faring sumptuously in the best house of Paris, to the poor ploughboy poet, struggling in a cottage,—what a contrast! Of the poet I shall say nothing, except that he was born 25th January, 1759, and died 21st July, 1796, in the thirty-seventh year of his age.
There is only a slender thread of Burns to be woven into this web, and yet, coming from him, it must not be neglected. In a letter dated 8th November, 1788, after saying a friendly word for the unfortunate house of Stuart, he thus prophetically alludes to our independence:—
"I will not, I cannot, enter into the merits of the cause, but I dare say the American Congress, in 1776, will be allowed to be as able and as enlightened as the English Convention was in 1688; and that their posterity will celebrate the centenary of their deliverance from us, as duly and sincerely as we do ours from the oppressive measures of the house of Stuart."[89]
The year 1788, when these words were written, was a year of commemoration, being the hundredth from the famous revolution by which the Stuarts were excluded from the throne of England. The "centenary" of our independence is not yet completed; but long ago the commemoration began. On the coming of that hundredth anniversary, the prophecy of Burns will be more than fulfilled.