| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: successively simulated to the running burthen "On a cold and
frosty morning," gives a good instance of the artistic taste
in children. And this need for overt action and lay figures
testifies to a defect in the child's imagination which
prevents him from carrying out his novels in the privacy of
his own heart. He does not yet know enough of the world and
men. His experience is incomplete. That stage-wardrobe and
scene-room that we call the memory is so ill provided, that he
can overtake few combinations and body out few stories, to his
own content, without some external aid. He is at the
experimental stage; he is not sure how one would feel in
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: with the date of his demise. He looked most pitiful and
ridiculous, shut up by himself in his aristocratic
precinct, like a bad old boy or an inferior forgotten
deity under a new dispensation; the burdocks grew
familiarly about his feet, the rain dripped all round
him; and the world maintained the most entire
indifference as to who he was or whither he had gone. In
another, a vaulted tomb, handsome externally but horrible
inside with damp and cobwebs, there were three mounds of
black earth and an uncovered thigh bone. This was the
place of interment, it appeared, of a family with whom
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare: And lo! I lie between that sun and thee:
The heat I have from thence doth little harm,
Thine eye darts forth the fire that burneth me; 196
And were I not immortal, life were done
Between this heavenly and earthly sun.
'Art thou obdurate, flinty, hard as steel?
Nay, more than flint, for stone at rain relenteth: 200
Art thou a woman's son, and canst not feel
What 'tis to love? how want of love tormenteth?
O! had thy mother borne so hard a mind, 203
She had not brought forth thee, but died unkind.
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: substance, or in thought, has been moulded by them. All Greek
gentlemen were educated under Homer. All Roman gentlemen, by Greek
literature. All Italian, and French, and English gentlemen, by
Roman literature, and by its principles. Of the scope of
Shakespeare, I will say only, that the intellectual measure of every
man since born, in the domains of creative thought, may be assigned
to him, according to the degree in which he has been taught by
Shakespeare. Well, what do these two men, centres of mortal
intelligence, deliver to us of conviction respecting what it most
behoves that intelligence to grasp? What is their hope--their crown
of rejoicing? what manner of exhortation have they for us, or of
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