| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: story of the Magic Mirror was one for which she vouched with
particular confidence, alleging indeed that one of her own family
had been an eye-witness of the incidents recorded in it.
"I tell the tale as it was told to me."
Stories enow of much the same cast will present themselves to the
recollection of such of my readers as have ever dabbled in a
species of lore to which I certainly gave more hours, at one
period of my life, than I should gain any credit by confessing.
AUGUST 1831.
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AUNT MARGARET'S MIRROR.
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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 Heroes by Charles Kingsley: they won the golden fleece; and of Medeia's love, and how she
helped them, and went with them over land and sea; and of all
their fearful dangers, from monsters, and rocks, and storms,
till the heart of Arete was softened, and all the women wept.
And the merchant kings rose up, each man from off his golden
throne, and clapped their hands, and shouted, 'Hail to the
noble Argonauts, who sailed the unknown sea!'
Then he went on, and told their journey over the sluggish
northern main, and through the shoreless outer ocean, to the
fairy island of the west; and of the Sirens, and Scylla, and
Charybdis, and all the wonders they had seen, till midnight
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