| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: scenery a character which to me was new and very interesting.
From the natural slope to seaward of these plains, they
are very easily irrigated, and in consequence singularly
fertile. Without this process the land would produce scarcely
anything, for during the whole summer the sky is cloudless.
The mountains and hills are dotted over with bushes and
low trees, and excepting these the vegetation is very scanty.
Each landowner in the valley possesses a certain portion of
hill-country, where his half-wild cattle, in considerable
numbers, manage to find sufficient pasture. Once every year
there is a grand "rodeo," when all the cattle are driven down,
The Voyage of the Beagle |
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 Forged Coupon by Leo Tolstoy: (1861). The literary world throbbed with new
life, and a brilliant company of young writers
came to the surface, counting among them names
of European celebrity, such as Dostoevsky, Ne-
krassov, and Saltykov. Unhappily the reign of
Progress was short. The bureaucratic circle hem-
ming in the Czar took alarm, and made haste to
secure their ascendancy by fresh measures of op-
pression. Many schools were closed, including
that of Tolstoy, and the nascent liberty of
the Press was stifled by the most rigid censor-
The Forged Coupon |
