| 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: hast no more to teach them." Surely such a temper is to be fought
against, prayed against, both in ourselves, and in the generation in
which we live. Surely there is no reason why such a temper should
overtake old age. There may be reason enough, "in the nature of
things." For that which is of nature is born only to decay and die.
But in man there is more than dying nature; there is spirit, and a
capability of spiritual and everlasting life, which renews its youth
like the eagle's, and goes on from strength to strength, and which, if
it have its autumns and its winters, has no less its ever-recurring
springs and summers; if it has its Sabbaths, finds in them only rest and
refreshment for coming labour. And why not in nations, societies,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: to perpetuate it!"
He rose to his feet and began to walk about the room with steps in
turn precipitate and slow. Then he made an imperious gesture, sending
every one away from him except the priest.
The next morning the duke, leaning on the arm of his old retainer
Bertrand, walked along the shore and among the rocks looking for the
son he had so long hated. He saw him from afar in a recess of the
granite rocks, lying carelessly extended in the sun, his head on a
tuft of mossy grass, his feet gracefully drawn up beneath him. So
lying, Etienne was like a swallow at rest. As soon as the tall old man
appeared upon the beach, the sound of his steps mingling faintly with
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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 Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: the charity of those who helped him, I cannot but fancy he may have
owed a little to his handsome face, and to that quick, responsive
nature, formed for love, which speaks eloquently through all
disguises, and can stamp an impression in ten minutes' talk or an
exchange of glances. He was the more dangerous in that he was far
from bold, but seemed to woo in spite of himself, and with a soft and
pleading eye. Ragged as he was, and many a scarecrow is in that
respect more comfortably furnished, even on board he was not without
some curious admirers.
There was a girl among the passengers, a tall, blonde, handsome,
strapping Irishwoman, with a wild, accommodating eye, whom Alick had
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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 Adieu by Honore de Balzac: plain. However forlorn and dangerous that refuge might be, its
miseries and its perils only courted men who had lately seen nothing
before them but the awful deserts of Russia. It was, in fact, a vast
asylum which had an existence of twenty-four hours only.
Utter lassitude, and the sense of unexpected comfort, made that mass
of men inaccessible to every thought but that of rest. Though the
artillery of the left wing of the Russians kept up a steady fire on
this mass,--visible like a stain now black, now flaming, in the midst
of the trackless snow,--this shot and shell seemed to the torpid
creatures only one inconvenience the more. It was like a thunderstorm,
despised by all because the lightning strikes so few; the balls struck
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