| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: movement in life': the other is 'The artistic life considered in
its relation to conduct.' The first is, of course, intensely
fascinating, for I see in Christ not merely the essentials of the
supreme romantic type, but all the accidents, the wilfulnesses
even, of the romantic temperament also. He was the first person
who ever said to people that they should live 'flower-like lives.'
He fixed the phrase. He took children as the type of what people
should try to become. He held them up as examples to their elders,
which I myself have always thought the chief use of children, if
what is perfect should have a use. Dante describes the soul of a
man as coming from the hand of God 'weeping and laughing like a
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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 Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: readily adopts into a scene like this, the stage-coach was
rattling down the mountain-road, and the driver sounded his horn,
while Echo caught up the notes, and intertwined them into a rich
and varied and elaborate harmony, of which the original performer
could lay claim to little share. The great hills played a concert
among themselves, each contributing a strain of airy sweetness.
Little Joe's face brightened at once.
"Dear father," cried he, skipping cheerily to and fro, "that
strange man is gone, and the sky and the mountains all seem glad
of it!"
"Yes," growled the lime-burner, with an oath, "but he has let the
 The Snow Image |