We Read
In That Curiously Interesting Book, "History Of Signboards - "
"The Greeks honored their great men and successful commanders by erecting
statues to them; the Romans rewarded their popular favorites with
triumphal entries and ovations; modern nations make the portraits of their
celebrities serve as signs for public-houses:
Vernon, the Butcher Cumberland, Wolfe, Hawke,
Prince Ferdinand, Granby, Burgoyne, Keppel, Howe,
Evil and good have had their tithe of talk,
And filled their signpost then, like Wellesley now."
If Wolfe served as a signboard recently in Britain, he has filled the same
office now close on a century in Canada, and still continues to do so. He
has defied wind and weather ever since the day when the Cholette Brothers
affixed to the house at the north-west corner of St. John and Palace
streets a rough statue of the gallant young soldier in the year 1771, with
one arm extended in the attitude of command, and pointing to the Falls of
Montmorency.
Nor has Mr. de Gaspe, the author of the "Canadians of Old," thought it
beneath his pen to indite an able disquisition on its origin, brimful of
wealth for our antiquaries and a great deal more practical in its bearings
than even Jonathan Oldbuck's great Essay on Castrametation. A Three Rivers
antiquarian had attempted to establish that it was Ives Cholette who had
been the sculptor of the statue in question, but our old friend (through
the church registers - and through ancient and irrefutable records) showed
it could neither be Ives Cholette, aged, in 1771, 10 years, nor his
younger brother Hyacinthe, aged then but 8 years, who had designed this
great work of art, but Cholette of another ilk.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 721 of 864
Words from 197796 to 198078
of 236821
