| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: its unimportant message in a tone of voice that has the charm of
fresh antiquity. I will not insist upon the art of Skelt's
purveyors. These wonderful characters that once so thrilled our
soul with their bold attitude, array of deadly engines and
incomparable costume, to-day look somewhat pallidly; the extreme
hard favour of the heroine strikes me, I had almost said with pain;
the villain's scowl no longer thrills me like a trumpet; and the
scenes themselves, those once unparalleled landscapes, seem the
efforts of a prentice hand. So much of fault we find; but on the
other side the impartial critic rejoices to remark the presence of
a great unity of gusto; of those direct clap-trap appeals, which a
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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 The First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells: fool to be inside that sphere. Even now, I asked myself, is to too late to
withdraw? The world outside the sphere, I knew, would be cold and
inhospitable enough for me - for weeks I had been living on subsidies from
Cavor - but after all, would it be as cold as the infinite zero, as
inhospitable as empty space? If it had not been for the appearance of
cowardice, I believe that even then I should have made him let me out. But
I hesitated on that score, and hesitated, and grew fretful and angry, and
the time passed.
There came a little jerk, a noise like champagne being uncorked in another
room, and a faint whistling sound. For just one instant I had a sense of
enormous tension, a transient conviction that my feet were pressing
The First Men In The Moon |
