| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Michael Strogoff by Jules Verne: placed in the front of the first sortie."
"Yes," replied the Grand Duke with an emotion which
he did not seek to hide, "these exiles are Russians, and it
is their right to fight for their country!"
"I believe I may assure your Highness," said the gover-
nor-general, "you will have no better soldiers."
"But they must have a chief," said the Grand Duke,
"who will he be?"
"They wish to recommend to your Highness," said the
head of police, "one of their number, who has distinguished
himself on several occasions."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: fields, there rising to peaks alternately naked and hairy with
pines. The colour throughout was black or ashen, and came to a
point in the ruins of the castle of Luc, which pricked up
impudently from below my feet, carrying on a pinnacle a tall white
statue of Our Lady, which, I heard with interest, weighed fifty
quintals, and was to be dedicated on the 6th of October. Through
this sorry landscape trickled the Allier and a tributary of nearly
equal size, which came down to join it through a broad nude valley
in Vivarais. The weather had somewhat lightened, and the clouds
massed in squadron; but the fierce wind still hunted them through
heaven, and cast great ungainly splashes of shadow and sunlight
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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 Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: hard stone, representing the four seasons, the faces already crumbling
away and blackened. This bas-relief was surmounted by a projecting
plinth, upon which a variety of chance growths had sprung up,--yellow
pellitory, bindweed, convolvuli, nettles, plantain, and even a little
cherry-tree, already grown to some height.
The door of the archway was made of solid oak, brown, shrunken, and
split in many places; though frail in appearance, it was firmly held
in place by a system of iron bolts arranged in symmetrical patterns. A
small square grating, with close bars red with rust, filled up the
middle panel and made, as it were, a motive for the knocker, fastened
to it by a ring, which struck upon the grinning head of a huge nail.
Eugenie Grandet |
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 Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: verses, nobody ever supposed it was from admiration; it was simply
a contract between themselves and a publisher or dealer.
If the Mutuals have really nothing among them worth admiring, that
alters the question. But if they are men with noble powers and
qualities, let me tell you, that, next to youthful love and family
affections, there is no human sentiment better than that which
unites the Societies of Mutual Admiration. And what would
literature or art be without such associations? Who can tell what
we owe to the Mutual Admiration Society of which Shakspeare, and
Ben Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher were members? Or to that of
which Addison and Steele formed the centre, and which gave us the
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
