ARCHIBALD PHILIP PRIMROSE, LORD ROSEBERY Archibald Philip Primrose, Earl of Rosebery, was born in London May 7, 1847, and succeeded to the title on the death of his grandfather in 1868. He was educated at Eton and at Christ Church, Oxford. He made his first speech in Parliament in 1870, when Gladstone_selected him to second the address to the speech from the throne. The first ten years of his public career are devoid of any notable incidents, though he took during all this time an active interest in the movements for social and educational reforms. He was elected Lord Rector of the University of Aberdeen in 1880. Lord Rosebery's public career as a Liberal statesman begins with his appointment as Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department in August, 1881. He became First Commissioner of Works in November, 1884. In Gladstone's next administration Rosebery was assigned the important post of Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and won general approval for the tact and skill he displayed in settling the difficulties growing out of the ServoBulgarian war and the Greek claims for territorial indemnity. Lord Rosebery remained a firm supporter of his chief when Gladstone brought forward his first Home Rule for Ireland Bill, when many political followers deserted their chief and the Liberal party. On Gladstone's return to power Lord Rosebery was appointed Foreign Minister a second time, and on the former's retirement from public life he was offered the Premiership by the Queen. The passing by of some of the older leaders of the Liberal party caused for a time a good deal of dissatisfaction and lack of support in the party. Rosebery was obliged to work with a small majority and had the misfortune to follow a leader of such great prestige as Mr. Gladstone. The Liberal majority gradually dwindled down and Lord Rosebery placed his resignation in the hands of the Queen. Lord Rosebery has long been and remains one of the most popular of the public men of England. He is a man of broad views and is ever interested in movements to promote the betterment of the condition of the laboring classes. As a public speaker he is in great demand and his public utterances are always received with consideration and respect. He is the author of the well-known monograph on the younger Pitt and a recognized authority on Robert Burns. His oration on the Scotch poet is given here. ORATION ON ROBERT BURNS Delivered before the tomb of Robert Burns, at Dumfries, Scotland, July 21, 1896. L ADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I come here as a loyal burgess of Dumfries, to do honor to the greatest burgess of Dumfries. You, Mr. Provost, have laid upon me a great distinction but a great burden. Your most illustrious burgess obtained privileges for his children in respect of his burgess-ship, but you impose on your youngest burgess an honor that might well break anybody's back-that of attempting to do justice in any shape or fashion to the hero of to-day's ceremony. But we citizens of Dumfries have a special claim to be considered on this day. We are surrounded by the choicest and the most sacred haunts of the poet. You have in this town the house in which he died, the "Globe" where we could have wished that some phonograph had then existed which could have communicated to us some of his wise and witty and wayward talk. You have the street commemorated in M'Culloch's tragic anecdote when Burns was shunned by his former friends, and you have the paths by the Nith which are associated with some of his greatest work. You have near you the room in which the whistle was contended for, and in which, if mere legend is to be trusted, the immortal Dr., Gregory was summoned to administer his first powders to the survivors of that memorable debauch. You have the stackyard in which, lying on his back and contemplating "Thou lingering star, with lessening ray, That lov'st to greet the early morn," he wrote the lines to "Mary in Heaven "-perhaps the most pathetic of his poems. You have near you the walk to the river, where, in his transport, he passed his wife and children without seeing them, "his brow flushed and his eyes shining with thet lustre of "Tam o 'Shanter." I wish you had but seen him," said his wife; "he was in such ecstacy that the tears were happing down his cheeks." That is why we are in Dumfries to-day. We come to honor Burns among these immortal haunts of his. But it is not to Dumfries alone that he is commemorated to-day; for all Scotland will pay her tribute. And this, surely, is but right. Mankind owes him a general debt. But the debt of Scotland is special. For Burns exalted our race, he hallowed Scotland and the Scottish tongue. Before his time we had for a long period been scarcely recognized; we had been falling out of the recollection of the world. From the time of the union of the crowns, and still more from the time of the legislative union, Scotland had lapsed into obscurity. Except for an occasional riot or a Jacobite rising, her existence was almost forgotten. She had, indeed, her Robertsons and her Humes writing history to general admiration, but no trace of Scottish authorship was discoverable in their works; indeed, every flavor of national idiom was carefully excluded. The Scottish dialect, as Burns called it, was in danger of perishing. Burns seemed at this juncture to start to his feet and reassert Scotland's claim to national existence; his Scottish notes rang through the world, and he thus preserved the Scottish language forever; for mankind will never allow to die that idiom in which his songs and poems are enshrined. That is a part of Scotland's debt to Burns. But this is much more than a Scottish demonstration; it is a collection of representatives from all quarters of the globe to own a common allegiance and a common faith. It is not only Scotsmen honoring the greatest of Scotsmen-we stretch far beyond a kingdom or a race—we are rather a sort of poetical Mohammedans gathered at a sort of poetical Mecca. And yet we are assembled in our high enthusiasm under circumstances which are somewhat paradoxical. For with all the appearance of joy, we celebrate not a festival, but a tragedy. It is not the sunrise but the sunset that we commemorate. It is not the birth of a new power into the world, the subtle germ of a fame that is to survive and inspire the generations of men; but it is perhaps more fitting that we celebrate the end and not |