apart from neighbouring Englishmen."

The loss on my side, to be sure, would be immensely the greater, were
it not happily certain that I _can_ make something of Scotsmen; can,
and indeed do, make friends of them.


The Cult of Burns.

All the same, this disability weighs me down with a sense of hopeless
obtuseness when I consider the deportment of the average intelligent
Scot at a Burns banquet, or a Burns _conversazione_, or a Burns
festival, or the unveiling of a Burns statue, or the putting up of a
pillar on some spot made famous by Burns. All over the world--and all
under it, too, when their time comes--Scotsmen are preparing
after-dinner speeches about Burns. The great globe swings round out of
the sun into the dark; there is always midnight somewhere; and always
in this shifting region the eye of imagination sees orators
gesticulating over Burns; companies of heated exiles with crossed arms
shouting "Auld Lang Syne"; lesser groups--if haply they be
lesser--reposing under tables, still in honor of Burns. And as the
vast continents sweep "eastering out of the high shadow which reaches
beyond the moon," and as new nations, with _their_ cities and
villages, their mountains and seashores, rise up on the morning-side,
lo! fresh troops, and still fresh troops, and yet again fresh troops,
wend or are carried out of action with the dawn.


Scott and Burns.