| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Anabasis by Xenophon: take the throne from Artaxerxes, and the ensuing
return of the Greeks, in which Xenophon played a
leading role. This occurred between 401 B.C. and
March 399 B.C.
PREPARER'S NOTE
This was typed from Dakyns' series, "The Works of Xenophon," a
four-volume set. The complete list of Xenophon's works (though
there is doubt about some of these) is:
Work Number of books
The Anabasis 7
The Hellenica 7
Anabasis |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: "Oh, I give it up," said Newman, simply.
"Then you are as bad as I!" said Bellegarde.
"No, because I don't take an 'intellectual pleasure'
in her prospective adventures. I don't in the least want
to see her going down hill. I had rather look the other way.
But why," he asked, in a moment, "don't you get your sister
to go and see her?"
Bellegarde stared. "Go and see Madame Dandelard--my sister?"
"She might talk to her to very good purpose."
Bellegarde shook his head with sudden gravity. "My sister can't
see that sort of person. Madame Dandelard is nothing at all;
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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 From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: take to be a mistake, the sand from the hills being not of quantity
sufficient to fill up the channel of a navigable river, and, if it
had, might easily have been stopped by the townspeople from falling
into the river. But that the sea has choked up the river with sand
is not only probable, but true; and there are other rivers which
suffer in the like manner in this same country.
This town of Lostwithiel retains, however, several advantages which
support its figure--as, first, that it is one of the Coinage Towns,
as I call them; or Stannary Towns, as others call them; (2) the
common gaol for the whole Stannary is here, as are also the County
Courts for the whole county of Cornwall.
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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: doctrines; but of men who try to discover and set forth, as far as
by human intellect is possible, the facts of the other world.
Divines may perhaps teach us how to arrive there, but only these two
poets have in any powerful manner striven to discover, or in any
definite words professed to tell, what we shall see and become
there; or how those upper and nether worlds are, and have been,
inhabited.
And what have they told us? Milton's account of the most important
event in his whole system of the universe, the fall of the angels,
is evidently unbelievable to himself; and the more so, that it is
wholly founded on, and in a great part spoiled and degraded from,
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