| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: authority, that Sperm Whales have been captured near a hundred feet
long at the time of capture.
But may it not be, that while the whales of the present hour are an
advance in magnitude upon those of all previous geological periods;
may it not be, that since Adam's time they have degenerated?
Assuredly, we must conclude so, if we are to credit the accounts of
such gentlemen as Pliny, and the ancient naturalists generally. For
Pliny tells us of Whales that embraced acres of living bulk, and
Aldrovandus of others which measured eight hundred feet in
length--Rope Walks and Thames Tunnels of Whales! And even in the
days of Banks and Solander, Cooke's naturalists, we find a Danish
 Moby Dick |
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 Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte: was happy again - though more inclined to burst into tears than
ever. If I had been forced to speak at that moment, a succession
of sobs would have inevitably ensued; and as it was, I could not
keep the water out of my eyes. I walked along with Miss Murray,
turning aside my face, and neglecting to notice several successive
remarks, till she bawled out that I was either deaf or stupid; and
then (having recovered my self-possession), as one awakened from a
fit of abstraction, I suddenly looked up and asked what she had
been saying.
CHAPTER XXI - THE SCHOOL
I LEFT Horton Lodge, and went to join my mother in our new abode at
 Agnes Grey |