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with little knowledge, but with much hope and with boundless courage. Their El Dorados vanished in thin air; but they founded the British Empire of the sea. And their names shall be remembered and loved so long as the English tongue is spoken in the land they were never to see again, and in many other lands where it is also spoken, thanks, in the first place, to them.

SIR WALTER SCOTT

SIR WALTER SCOTT

MY LORD PROVOST AND GENTLEMEN,-Any man rising to propose 'The Memory of Sir Walter Scott' in any gathering must needs be abashed. Should he keep to the beaten path, Charity herself could but say with Dr. Johnson that his speech contains much that is true and trite.' Should he digress from the obvious, Justice must add with the sage, and much that is original and ridiculous.' But when, as now, a speaker born south of the Tweed stands confronted by The Edinburgh Walter Scott Club'; when, as to-night, your President, less fortunate in that capacity than twelve of his predecessors, can claim no bond of nativity with you and the subject of your loving reverence; why then, gentlemen, he can only reflect that you are wholly responsible for the aberration of your choice, and claim acquittal for his conduct of the case, 'If '—as Sir Walter was so fond of quoting-'If, so he be in that concatenation accordingly.'

Not for me the privileged nonchalance of my predecessors! Of, say, Mr. Haldane, with his easy In this Our dining-room, restrained from the criticism of . . . outsiders, we may let OURSELVES go a little about OURSELVES.' From that point of view your President is an outsider. But I make no apology for intrusion. From any other point of view, and there are many, I may say to you, with Plutarch's old soldier who found a solitary freedman

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