The Sixth Centenary of the Battle of Stirling was celebrated at Stirling on September 13th, 1897. In the afternoon there was an open-air demonstration, with speeches at the National Wallace Monument on Abbey Craig. At night Provost Kinross and the Custodiers of the Monument gave a banquet at the Public Hall, at which Lord Rosebery proposed the toast of "The immortal memory of Sir William Wallace."

WALLACE

I WOULD gladly have exchanged toasts with either of the distinguished friends who have preceded me on the list, more especially since I am expected not so much to propose a toast as to deliver a historical address. I confess that I have come here more or less prepared, or rather more or less unprepared, to propose a toast. But if I had known that I was expected to deliver a historical address I should have claimed to exchange with one at least of my friends. I do not care which of the Balfours I had been chosen to fill the place of, whether it had been my noble friend on my left (Lord Balfour of Burleigh) or my right hon. friend on my right (Mr. J. B. Balfour); but I would rather have responded for any toast or proposed any toast than come here under the

hypothesis that I was to deliver a historical address on so thorny a subject as Sir William Wallace. I humbly submit that even to propose his memory is a very perilous task.

There are, I think, two classes of my fellow countrymen who would gladly be in the position in which I find myself. One is the class of minute archæological historians, who would find a savage, an almost devilish, delight in winnowing the true from the false in the legends that surround Sir William Wallace, and in distinguishing all that is legendary from the few golden facts which remain. But I think that you will agree with me this would not be the occasion for such a discourse, and, were it the occasion, I am not the man. After all, these points are not always of very firstrate importance. There is, however, one to which I will allude. It is sometimes, I believe, the subject of controversy as to whether Wallace was a Scotsman at all. I regard that as a point of the most infinitesimal importance. It may be a subject of interest to many to know what is the birthplace or the district in which a person is

brought up when that person has achieved a certain eminence; but there are greater figures than these, who embody and absorb a nation and whom a nation has absorbed and embodied, but whose exact place of birth is a matter of no importance at all. We all know that Catherine II. of Russia was a German princess. We all know that the first Napoleon was of Italian origin and born in Corsica. But I do not suppose there is anybody who has read a page of history who will deny that Catherine is one of the greatest of Russians and that Napoleon is incomparably the greatest of Frenchmen.

Then there is another class who would have rejoiced to fill my place, but I am not sure either that they would have been the right persons—I mean the class of passionate and indiscriminating patriots to whom everything, true or false, connected with the memory of a national hero is dear, and who, without the faintest effort or stress of deglutition, can swallow every legend and every tradition that is associated with their favourite hero. Sir, those patriots would soar into

heights to which I cannot aspire, and I venture to think that in so soaring they are not always performing a wise or patriotic task; because I firmly believe that the stronger, and the broader, and the safer the base for your enthusiasm the better it is for that enthusiasm; and that exaggeration, in matters of enthusiasm, is apt to lead to ridicule and to reaction.

The authentic and received facts about Sir William Wallace are, indeed, extremely few, but this, in my judgment—and I hope you will accept that judgment-so far from diminishing the merit of that great man, seems to me a conclusive proof of his greatness. That with so small a substratum of historical events he should have left so great an impression upon his countrymen would in itself prove him to be one of the greatest of Scotsmen. But the facts, whether few or many, are thunderbolts in themselves. The first is his own appearance—his magical, portentous, meteorical, providential appearance in the midst of the ruin, the suffering, and the disaster of his country. Fordun, the historian, describes it in words which are better