| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: appeared suddenly in the Infinite and filled it with their presence,
as the stars shine in the invisible ether.
The scintillations of their united diadems illumined space like the
fires of the sky at dawn upon the mountains. Waves of light flowed
from their hair, and their movements created tremulous undulations in
space like the billows of a phosphorescent sea.
The two Seers beheld the SERAPH dimly in the midst of the immortal
legions. Suddenly, as though all the arrows of a quiver had darted
together, the Spirits swept away with a breath the last vestiges of
the human form; as the SERAPH rose he became yet purer; soon he seemed
to them but a faint outline of what he had been at the moment of his
Seraphita |
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 Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: sacrificed to the advantage of the rich, and the rights of the
majority to the privileges of the few. The consequence is, that
England, at the present day, combines the extremes of fortune in
the bosom of her society, and her perils and calamities are
almost equal to her power and her renown. *a
[Footnote a: [The legislation of England for the forty years is
certainly not fairly open to this criticism, which was written
before the Reform Bill of 1832, and accordingly Great Britain has
thus far escaped and surmounted the perils and calamities to
which she seemed to be exposed.]]
In the United States, where the public officers have no
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