| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: spirit, and so they would have wasted their songs upon an unworthy
hearer.
Next morning I went along to visit the church. It is a long-backed
red-and-white building, very much restored, and stands in a pleasant
graveyard among those great trees of which I have spoken already.
The sky was drowned in a mist. Now and again pulses of cold wind
went about the enclosure, and set the branches busy overhead, and the
dead leaves scurrying into the angles of the church buttresses. Now
and again, also, I could hear the dull sudden fall of a chestnut
among the grass - the dog would bark before the rectory door - or
there would come a clinking of pails from the stable-yard behind.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: and the possessors of it are the wealthy, whereas in some other place it is
not money, and the ownership of it does not confer wealth; just as the
standard of morals varies, and what is honourable to some men is
dishonourable to others. And if we wish to enquire why a house is valuable
to us but not to the Scythians, or why the Carthaginians value leather
which is worthless to us, or the Lacedaemonians find wealth in iron and we
do not, can we not get an answer in some such way as this: Would an
Athenian, who had a thousand talents weight of the stones which lie about
in the Agora and which we do not employ for any purpose, be thought to be
any the richer?
ERASISTRATUS: He certainly would not appear so to me.
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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 Astoria by Washington Irving: to the mouth of the Columbia, and presented a view of affairs at
Astoria, we will return for a moment to the master spirit of the
enterprise, who regulated the springs of Astoria, at his
residence in New York.
It will be remembered, that a part of the plan of Mr. Astor was
to furnish the Russian fur establishment on the northwest coast
with regular supplies, so as to render it independent of those
casual vessels which cut up the trade and supplied the natives
with arms. This plan had been countenanced by our own government,
and likewise by Count Pahlen, the Russian minister at Washington.
As its views, however, were important and extensive, and might
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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 The Complete Angler by Izaak Walton: their several kinds, and to what flies every particular cadis turns, and
then how to use them, first as they be cadis, and after as they be flies, is
an art, and an art that every one that professes to be an angler has not
leisure to search after, and, if he had, is not capable of learning.
I'll tell you, scholar; several countries have several kinds of cadises, that
indeed differ as much as dogs do; that is to say, as much as a very cur
and a greyhound do. These be usually bred in the very little rills, or
ditches, that run into bigger rivers; and I think a more proper bait for
those very rivers than any other. I know not how, or of what, this cadis
receives life, or what coloured fly it turns to; but doubtless they are the
death of many Trouts: and this is one killing way:
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