| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: washed steeds to behold the death-pangs of her rival.
Were this description carefully re-written, it would be quite
admirable. The conception of making a prose poem out of paint is
excellent. Much of the best modern literature springs from the
same aim. In a very ugly and sensible age, the arts borrow, not
from life, but from each other.
His sympathies, too, were wonderfully varied. In everything
connected with the stage, for instance, he was always extremely
interested, and strongly upheld the necessity for archaeological
accuracy in costume and scene-painting. 'In art,' he says in one
of his essays, 'whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: for instance nobly enough, "are not like snow and wind, they must be
deduced and known from the secrets of nature. Therefore misfortune
is ignorance, fortune is knowledge. The man who walks out in the
rain is not unfortunate if he gets a ducking."
"Nature," he says again, "makes the text, and the medical man adds
the gloss; but the two fit each other no better than a dog does a
bath;" and again, when he is arguing against the doctors who hated
chemistry--"Who hates a thing which has hurt nobody? Will you
complain of a dog for biting you, if you lay hold of his tail? Does
the emperor send the thief to the gallows, or the thing which he has
stolen? The thief, I think. Therefore science should not be
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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 The Marvelous Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum: would then be a horse-and-buggy."
At this the Scarecrow gave a gasp and the Tin
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Woodman stopped short and looked reproachfully at the Woggle-Bug. At the
same time the Saw-Horse loudly snorted his derision; and even the
Pumpkinhead put up his hand to hide the smile which, because it was carved
upon his face, he could not change to a frown.
But the Woggle-Bug strutted along as if he had made some brilliant remark,
and the Scarecrow was obliged to say:
"I have heard, my dear friend, that a person can become over-educated; and
although I have a high respect for brains, no matter how they may be
The Marvelous Land of Oz |
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 In the Cage by Henry James: dusk, all her own little tables, little bowls and little jars and
little other arrangements, and the wonderful thing she had made of
the garden of the vicarage. This small domain, which her young
friend had never seen, bloomed in Mrs. Jordan's discourse like a
new Eden, and she converted the past into a bank of violets by the
tone in which she said "Of course you always knew my one passion!"
She obviously met now, at any rate, a big contemporary need,
measured what it was rapidly becoming for people to feel they could
trust her without a tremor. It brought them a peace that--during
the quarter of an hour before dinner in especial--was worth more to
them than mere payment could express. Mere payment, none the less,
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