text:  PROFESSOR WILSON then rose and said--Were this Festival but to commemorate the genius of Burns and it were asked what need now for such commemoration since his fame is coextensive with the literature of the land and enshrined in every household? I might answer that although admiration of the poet be wide as the world yet we his compatriots to whom he is especially dear rejoice to see the universal sentiment concentered in one great assemblage of his own people: that we meet in thousands and tens of thousands to honour him who delights each single one of us at his own hearth