To the Editor of the Syracuse Journal:--
In the discussions relating to the "Giant," I find there are many
who favor the Grecian and Roman school of sculpture. The Greeks
and Romans excelled the early Egyptians in one thing only, that
is representing the human hair. Their male statues have flowing
and bushy locks and a beard. On the Egyptian statue, the hair
looks more like a skull cap on the back of the head, than hair,
with no indication of beard. They had been so afflicted with
plagues through the Israelites, that they would have nothing that
was like them, or that reminded them of them. The Cardiff giant
has no beard and nothing on the forehead to indicate hair; behind
the ears running up to the crown, there seems to be something,
that when he is raised, may show the Egyptian school of sculpture.
As art goes from one country to another, the style changes somewhat
to suit the taste of the people. In America, at first, our sculptors
and painters copied from the French and Italian schools, but put
on a little more drapery, as our people were modest and would not
bear a true copy. Time, the destroyer of all things, has turned
the drapery into dust, and we now have the original in all its
glory and shame. W.
P.S.--A hard-shell brother at my elbow says he will go his bottom
dollar that the Cardiff chap is the original "Poor Uncle Ned, who
had no hair on the top of his head;" he has lain down there and
got Klu-Kluxed. (Klu-Kluxed is a Greek word, and means petrified
or dried up.) The only objection to his theory is, Uncle Ned's
shin bone curved backward, this man's curves forward.