| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: he led the way to the studio of his friend Adolf Naumann,
whom he mentioned as one of the chief renovators of Christian art,
one of those who had not only revived but expanded that grand
conception of supreme events as mysteries at which the successive
ages were spectators, and in relation to which the great souls
of all periods became as it were contemporaries. Will added
that he had made himself Naumann's pupil for the nonce.
"I have been making some oil-sketches under him," said Will.
"I hate copying. I must put something of my own in. Naumann has
been painting the Saints drawing the Car of the Church, and I have
been making a sketch of Marlowe's Tamburlaine Driving the Conquered
 Middlemarch |
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 Marie by H. Rider Haggard: with, and now you want to borrow goods to pay for cattle--from me, whom
you hate. You are not proud, Mynheer Pereira, when you have an end to
serve, whatever that end may be," and I looked at him. My instinct
warned me against this false and treacherous man, who, I felt, was even
then plotting in his heart to bring some evil upon me.
"No, I am not proud. Why should I be, seeing that I mean to repay you
twice over for anything which you may lend me now?"
I reflected a while. Certainly our journey to Natal would be pleasanter
if Pereira were not of the company. Also, if he went with us, I was
sure that before we came to the end of that trek, one or other of us
would leave his bones on the road. In short, not to put too fine a
 Marie |