WHAT WE OWE TO ROBERT BURNS.
Burns has been one of the world awakeners. His voice rang out of the stillness, like the clear sweet notes of a bugle horn, and his songs were sung with a nerve and strength of nature that stirred to its depths the popular heart.
Describing Robert Burns' conversational gifts, Mr. Carlyle wrote: "They were the theme of all that ever heard him. All kinds of gifts, from the gracefullest allusions of courtesy to the highest fire of passionate speech, loud floods of mirth, soft wailings of affection, laconic emphasis, clear piercing insight, all were in him."
He awoke the poor and the despised to the dignity of man as man, irrespective of the accidents of poverty or wealth.
"The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The man's the man for a' that."
Thus helping to deliver men from the debasing worship of sordid gold, and of such rank as kings can confer on even the most worthless.
"The man of independent mind
He looks and laughs at a' that."
He opened the eyes of the Scottish people, at home and abroad, to the glory of their nation's history, and glowing with the hope of a day—
"When man to man the world o'er
Shall brithers be for a' that."
He also opened men's eyes to the hatefulness of all shams and hypocrisies; of meanness, selfishness and pride; of all narrowness and greed and cruelty thus—