Excerpt from Chronicle of the Hundredth Birthday of Robert Burns

"He'll hae misfortunes great and sma',
But aye a heart aboon them a',
Hell be a credit till us a',
Well a be proud o'Robin."

The celebration of the hundredth birthday of Robert Burns, on the 25th day of January, in the year 1859, presented a spectacle unprecedented in the history of the world.

The extent and variety of the materials necessary to chronicle the incidents of such a day may be judged of by the following analysis of the meetings herein chronicled:

Scotland, . 676
England, . 7
Ireland, . 10
Colonies, . 48
United States, . 61
Copenhagen, . 1
Total, . 872

The utmost enthusiasm pervaded all ranks and classes. Villages and hamlets, unnoticed in statistical reports, unrecorded in Gazetteers, had their dinners, suppers, and balls. City vied with clachan, peer with peasant, philanthropist with patriot, philosopher with statesman, orator with poet, in honouring the memory of the Ploughman Bard. The meetings were no less remarkable for their numbers than for their unanimity of sentiment, the number of speakers at each meeting being greatly over the average on other public occasions, and far beyond what the space of this Chronicle can record.

Many noble poems and eloquent orations have been omitted. It was not easy to see and resolutely keep the way to this necessary condensation. The determination is told by the book itself, which chronicles only Robert Burns.

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