| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: he introduced them into his romances. If he had been told
what would be the nature of the movement that he was so
lightly initiating, he would have been very incredulous and
not a little scandalised. At the time when he wrote, the
real drift of this new manner of pleasing people in fiction
was not yet apparent; and, even now, it is only by looking at
the romances of Victor Hugo that we are enabled to form any
proper judgment in the matter. These books are not only
descended by ordinary generation from the Waverley novels,
but it is in them chiefly that we shall find the
revolutionary tradition of Scott carried farther that we
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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 Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: work while the rest sit near and talk till the ripe decorations
begin to fall.
Wressley was the working-member of the Foreign Office firm, and, to
keep him up to his duties when he showed signs of flagging, he was
made much of by his superiors and told what a fine fellow he was.
He did not require coaxing, because he was of tough build, but what
he received confirmed him in the belief that there was no one quite
so absolutely and imperatively necessary to the stability of India
as Wressley of the Foreign Office. There might be other good men,
but the known, honored and trusted man among men was Wressley of the
Foreign Office. We had a Viceroy in those days who knew exactly
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