| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: warmly interested in their favour. The great contemporary
master of wordmanship, and indeed of all literary arts and
technicalities, had not unnaturally dazzled a beginner. But
it is best to dwell on merits, for it is these that are most
often overlooked.
BURNS. - I have left the introductory sentences on Principal
Shairp, partly to explain my own paper, which was merely
supplemental to his amiable but imperfect book, partly
because that book appears to me truly misleading both as to
the character and the genius of Burns. This seems
ungracious, but Mr. Shairp has himself to blame; so good a
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: water that beats upon the surf that they find most lime with which
to build. And as they build they form a barrier against the surf,
inside of which, in water still as glass, the weaker and more
delicate things can grow in safety, just as these very Encrinites
may have grown, rooted in the lime-mud, and waving their slender
arms at the bottom of the clear lagoon. Such mighty builders are
these little coral polypes, that all the works of men are small
compared with theirs. One single reef, for instance, which is
entirely made by them, stretches along the north-east coast of
Australia for nearly a thousand miles. Of this you must read some
day in Mr. Jukes's Voyage of H.M.S. "Fly." Every island
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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 Eve and David by Honore de Balzac: him turn the same cold eyes on her, the same look that the Cointets
had given her, and Petit-Claud and Cerizet, she tried to watch and
guess old Sechard's intentions. Trouble thrown away! Old Sechard,
never sober, never drunk, was inscrutable; intoxication is a double
veil. If the old man's tipsiness was sometimes real, it was quite
often feigned for the purpose of extracting David's secret from his
wife. Sometimes he coaxed, sometimes he frightened his daughter-in-
law.
"I will drink up my property; I WILL BUY AN ANNUITY," he would
threaten when Eve told him that she knew nothing.
The humiliating struggle was wearing her out; she kept silence at
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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 Enemies of Books by William Blades: No! but offered him some old paper, and took from a shelf the `Boke
of St. Albans' and others, weighing 9 lbs., for which she received 9_d_.
The pedlar carried them through Gainsborough tied up in string, past a
chemist's shop, who, being used to buy old paper to wrap his drugs in,
called the man in, and, struck by the appearance of the `Boke,' gave
him 3_s_. for the lot. Not being able to read the Colophon, he took it
to an equally ignorant stationer, and offered it to him for a guinea,
at which price he declined it, but proposed that it should be exposed
in his window as a means of eliciting some information about it.
It was accordingly placed there with this label, `Very old curious work.'
A collector of books went in and offered half-a-crown for it,
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