Front View of Memorial and Granite Approach to Samuel Champlain at Plattsburgh
At Crown Point on May 3d of this year, Mr. Hanotaux, who led the French delegation entrusted with the presentation of the bust, “La France”, to the United States, remarked in his address:
A French delegation has come to seal upon the base of this magnificent monument an image of France. It expresses well what we have wished to say; it will depict to you France, such as we Frenchmen conceive it, and as we love it. It is France as she wishes to be and as she is.
Perhaps it is not amiss to supplement this sentiment by pointing out that we have chosen as the historic genius of our lake, not an American, nor an Englishman, but a Frenchman, who represents to us France and the sons of France as we know them and as we wish them to be. He was for us the crowning exemplar of ideal chivalry, without fear and without reproach,—the first of many Frenchmen through whom we owe so much to France. But such a character belongs to the world. His representation here presides over the scenes of a great historic epoch that will never be repeated. Our house is no longer divided: England and America will never again contend upon the battlefield.
Samuel Champlain was called to his reward on Christmas day, the anniversary of the Prince of Peace and Good Will throughout the world. That peace is now assured us by the peoples who have gathered here, and as time goes on and the agencies of human happiness increase within our border, the silent form above us will tell His Master’s message with an eloquence that we in our day cannot hear so well. (Applause.)
I now take pleasure in presenting to you His Excellency, Gov. John A. Dix.
Governor Dix spoke as follows:
Admiring to-day this beautiful statue of Champlain, this splendid embodiment of genius and patriotism, it seems as if one were gazing upon it through the vista of a beautiful parkway. The statue, in all its edifying beauty, is here before us, and yet its influence and its meaning carry the mental eye adown three centuries of visualization of civilizing events—sad and happy, depressing and gladdening, horrible and glorious, all necessary in the foliage of the avenue of progress through which the mind perceives and tries to understand the character of the man whom we here honor.
Have you, in walking along the parkway of a city’s breathing-place or the lane of an arbored village, at the end of your line of vision, come upon a solitary figure—a monument, a great tree, the section of a home with a cupola upon it, or whatever it may be that by its height and loneliness interrupt and end the vista? Have you noticed that the width of the vista is seemingly greatest where you stand, and gradually diminishes until at the finishing point it is narrow, very narrow?