| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: celibates of that chivalrous woman-worship which our Gothic forefathers
brought with them into the West, which shed a softening and ennobling
light round the mediaeval convent life, and warded off for centuries the
worst effects of monasticism. Among the religious of Egypt, the monk
regarded the nun, the nun the monk, with dread and aversion; while both
looked on the married population of the opposite sex with a coarse
contempt and disgust which is hardly credible, did not the foul records
of it stand written to this day, in Rosweyde's extraordinary "Vitae
Patrum Eremiticorum;" no barren school of metaphysic, truly, for those
who are philosophic enough to believe that all phenomena whatsoever of
the human mind are worthy matter for scientific induction.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: rather believe that in periods of new effort and violent change,
disappointment is a wholesome medicine; and that in the secret of
it, as in the twilight so beloved by Titian, we may see the colours
of things with deeper truth than in the most dazzling sunshine. And
because these truths about the works of men, which I want to bring
to-day before you, are most of them sad ones, though at the same
time helpful; and because also I believe that your kind Irish hearts
will answer more gladly to the truthful expression of a personal
feeling, than to the exposition of an abstract principle, I will
permit myself so much unreserved speaking of my own causes of
regret, as may enable you to make just allowance for what, according
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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 To-morrow by Joseph Conrad: exactly like my dad. He wants me here just to
have somebody to order about. However, we two
were hard up; and what's five quid to him--once
in sixteen hard years?"
"Oh, but I am sorry for you. Did you never
want to come back home?"
"Be a lawyer's clerk and rot here--in some such
place as this?" he cried in contempt. "What! if
the old man set me up in a home to-day, I would
kick it down about my ears--or else die there be-
fore the third day was out."
To-morrow |
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 Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: something. For a couple of hours I poked about without seeing anything
that I could get a shot at, but at last, just as I was again within
seventy yards of the waggon, I put up an old Impala ram from behind a
mimosa thorn. He ran straight for the waggon, and it was not till he
was passing within a few feet of it that I could get a decent shot at
him. Then I pulled, and caught him half-way down the spine. Over he
went, dead as a door-nail, and a pretty shot it was, though I ought not
to say it. This little incident put me into rather a better humour,
especially as the buck had rolled right against the after-part of the
waggon, so I had only to gut him, fix a reim round his legs, and haul
him up. By the time I had done this the sun was down, and the full moon
Long Odds |
