| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: Of the two fans and fairy Rosabelle.
Hot was the day; her weary sire and I
Sat in our chairs companionably nigh,
Each with a headache sat her sire and I.
Instant the hostess waked: she viewed the scene,
Divined the giants' languor by their mien,
And with hospitable care
Tackled at once an Atlantean chair.
Her pigmy stature scarce attained the seat -
She dragged it where she would, and with her feet
Surmounted; thence, a Phaeton launched, she crowned
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: difficult to be found. I passed the river within two days' journey
of its head, near a wide plain, which is entirely laid under water
when it begins to overflow the banks. Its channel is even here so
wide, that a ball-shot from a musket can scarce reach the farther
bank. Here is neither boat nor bridge, and the river is so full of
hippopotami, or river-horses, and crocodiles, that it is impossible
to swim over without danger of being devoured. The only way of
passing it is upon floats, which they guide as well as they can with
long poles. Nor is even this way without danger, for these
destructive animals overturn the floats, and tear the passengers in
pieces. The river horse, which lives only on grass and branches of
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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 Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: desirous to excite some of my hearers, at least, to examine these
questions for themselves.
I entreat them not to listen to the hasty sneer to which many of late
have given way, that the Alexandrian divines were mere mystics, who
corrupted Christianity by an admixture of Oriental and Greek thought.
My own belief is that they expanded and corroborated Christianity, in
spite of great errors and defects on certain points, far more than they
corrupted it; that they presented it to the minds of cultivated and
scientific men in the only form in which it would have satisfied their
philosophic aspirations, and yet contrived, with wonderful wisdom, to
ground their philosophy on the very same truths which they taught to the
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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 Chouans by Honore de Balzac: spectators by the laconic harangue of the stranger was like that of a
tom-tom in the midst of tender music. But the word "harangue" is
insufficient to reproduce the hatred, the desires of vengeance
expressed by the haughty gesture of the hand, the brevity of the
speech, and the look of sullen and cool-blooded energy on the
countenance of the speaker. The coarseness and roughness of the man,--
chopped out, as it seemed by an axe, with his rough bark still left on
him,--and the stupid ignorance of his features, made him seem, for the
moment, like some half-savage demigod. He stood stock-still in a
prophetic attitude, as though he were the Genius of Brittany rising
from a slumber of three years, to renew a war in which victory could
The Chouans |
