beauty or the ugliness, the ease or the hardship. It is through this reciprocal relation of the inner man and the environing world that there are so few misfits. If Bergson were right, our western world would be full of disharmonies; we should find Mediterranean geniuses springing up in Scandinavian atmospheres, as is never the case. The racial creative spirit of man always reacts to its own historic racial environment, into the remote past.

Our conclusion is that distinctive spiritual and intellectual powers originate along lines of slow racial evolution in climate and surroundings of distinct kinds. In the south were the Mediterranean lines of migration along sunny seas, formidable enough in the winter season, favorable to rapid development of maritime powers, together with artistic powers, the Mycenæans, the Phoenicians, the early Italian races. The Mediterraneans take nature for granted. In the center of Europe were the lines of Alpine or Celtic invaders, kept entirely away from the sea, races of agriculturalists and of miners, rich in mechanical talents, neither adventurous nor sea loving. To the north lived a race of hunters, of seafaring adventurers, resolutely contending with the forces of nature, fond of the open, curious and inquisitive about the causes of things; deliberate in spiritual development, very gradually they reach the greatest intellectual heights and depths.

The racial aptitudes in these three environments of the past twenty thousand years are now revealed in anatomy and will be no less clearly revealed in the predispositions of morals, of intellect, and of spirit. Here nature, religion, and beauty, kept apart by the superficial vision of man in science, theology, and æsthetics, are one in the eternal vision and purpose of the Creator. In the marvelous continuity of heredity a thousand years are as yesterday.

This is my idea of the origin of the racial soul, this is my interpretation of Wordsworth's immortal lines:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.

Burroughs, the poet of to-day, found himself at home in the environment of his remote flint-making ancestors of northern Europe. The soul that rose with him had its setting for countless generations in the north; it came from afar, not in forgetfulness, reflecting and recalling the northern clouds of Nature's glory.

LORD ROSEBERY

ROBERT BURNS

Address of Archibald Philip Primrose, Earl of Rosebery, statesman, orator, British Prime Minister 1894-95 (born in London, May 7, 1847), delivered in St. Andrew's Hall, Glasgow, July 21, 1896, being the occasion of the Burns Centenary celebration at Dumfries, Scotland. Another speech is given in Volume III.

I CANNOT perhaps deny that to-day has been a labor, but it has been a labor of love. [The speaker had delivered an address in the morning before the tomb of Burns, at Dumfries.] It is, it must be, a source of joy and pride to see our champion Scotsman receive the honor and admiration and affection of humanity, to see as I have seen this morning the long processions bringing homage and tribute to the conquering dead. But these have only been signs and symptoms of world-wide reverence and devotion. That generous and immortal soul pervades the universe to-day. In the humming city and in the crowd of men, in the backwood and in the swamp, where the sentinel paces the black frontier or the sailor smokes the evening pipe, or where, above all, the farmer and his men pursue their summer toil, whether under the Stars and Stripes or under the Union Jack, the thought and sympathy of men are directed to Robert Burns.

I have sometimes asked myself, if a roll-call of fame were read over at the beginning of every century, how many men of eminence would answer a second time to their names. But of our poet there is no doubt or question. The adsum of Burns rings out clear and unchallenged. There are few before him on the list, and we cannot now conceive a list without him. He towers high and yet he lived in an age when the average was sublime. It sometimes seems to me as if the whole Eighteenth century was a constant preparation for a constant working up

to the great drama of the Revolution which closed it. The scenery is all complete when the time arrives-the dark volcanic country, the hungry, desperate people, the firefly nobles, the concentrated splendor of the Court; in the midst, in her place as heroine, the dazzling queen; and during lone previous years brooding nature has been producing not merely the immediate actors, but figures worthy of the scene. What a glittering procession it is! We can only mark some of the principal figures. Burke leads the way by seniority; then come Fox, and Goethe, Nelson and Mozart, Schiller, Pitt and Burns, Wellington and Napoleon; and among these Titans, Burns is a conspicuous figure-a figure which appeals most of all to the imagination and affection of mankind. Napoleon looms larger to the imagination, but on the affection he has no hold. It is in the combination of the two powers that Burns is supreme. What is his secret? We are always discussing him and endeavoring to find it out. Perhaps, like the latent virtue of some medical baths, it may never be satisfactorily explained, but at any rate let us discuss him again.

That is, I presume, our object to-night. What pleasanter or more familiar occupation can there be for Scotsmen? But the Scotsmen who enjoy it have generally, perhaps, more time than I. Pardon, then, the imperfections of my speech, for I speak of a subject which no one can altogether compass, and which a busy man has, perhaps, no right to attempt.

The clue to Burns' extraordinary hold on mankind is possibly a complicated one. It has, perhaps, many developments. If so, we have no time to consider it to-night; but I personally believe the causes are, like most great causes, simple, though it might take long to point out all the ways in which they operate. The secret, as it seems to me, lies in two wordsinspiration and sympathy. But if I wished to prove my contention I should go on quoting from his poems all night, and his admirers would still declare that I had omitted the best passages. I must proceed, then, in a more summary way. There seem to be two great natural forces in British literature -I use the safe adjective of "British" [laughter and applause] --and your applause shows me that I was right to do so. [Renewed applause.] I use it partly because hardly any of Burns'

poetry is strictly English, partly because he hated and was perhaps the first to protest against the use of the word English as including Scottish. There are, I say, two great forces, which seem sheer inspiration and nothing else—I mean Shakespeare and Burns. This is not the place or the time to speak of the miracle called Shakespeare, but one must say a word of the miracle called Burns.

Try and reconstruct Burns as he was a peasant born in a cottage that no sanitary inspector in these days would tolerate for a moment [laughter]; struggling with desperate effort against pauperism, almost in vain; snatching at scraps of learning in the intervals of toil, as it were with his teeth; a heavy, silent lad, proud of his plow. All of a sudden, without preface or warning, he breaks out into exquisite song like a nightingale from the brushwood, and continues singing as sweetly, in nightingale pauses, till he dies. The nightingale sings because he cannot help it. He can only sing exquisitely, because he knows no other. So it was with Burns. What is this but inspiration? One can no more measure or reason about it than measure or reason about Niagara, and, remember, the poetry is only a fragment of Burns. Amazing as it may seem, all contemporary testimony is unanimous that the man was far more wonderful than his works. "It will be the misfortune of Burns' reputation," writes an accomplished lady, who might well have judged him harshly, "in the records of literature, not only to future generations and to foreign countries, but even with his native Scotland and a number of his contemporaries, that he has been regarded as a poet and nothing but a poet. Poetry," she continues--"I appeal to all who had the advantage of being personally acquainted with him-was actually not his forte. None certainly ever outshone Burns in the charms-the sorcery I would almost call it-of fascinating conversation, the spontaneous eloquence of social argument, or the unstudied poignancy of brilliant repartee," and she goes on to describe the almost superhuman fascination of his voice and of his eyes-"those balls of black fire which electrified all on whom they rested."

It seems strange to be told that it would be an injustice to judge Burns by his poetry alone, but as to the magnetism of his presence and conversation there is only one verdict. "No