| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Letters from England by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft: assiduously. The landlord pays us a visit every day to know if we
have all we wish.
LONDON, Sunday, November 1
Here I am in the mighty heart, but before I say one word about it I
will go on from Wednesday evening with my journal. On Thursday,
though still very feeble, I dined at Green Bank, the country-seat of
Mr. William Rathbone. I was unwilling to leave Liverpool without
sharing with your father some of the hospitalities offered to us and
made a great effort to go. The place is very beautiful and the
house full of comfortable elegance.
The next morning we started for Birmingham, ninety-seven miles from
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Smalcald Articles by Dr. Martin Luther: all the rest adhere [as their support] in order that the
[concord and] unity of Christians may be preserved against
sects and heretics, and that such a head were chosen by men,
and that it were placed within the choice and power of men to
change or remove this head, just as the Council of Constance
adopted nearly this course with reference to the Popes,
deposing three and electing a fourth; supposing, I say, that
the Pope and See at Rome would yield and accept this (which,
nevertheless, is impossible; for thus he would have to suffer
his entire realm and estate to be overthrown and destroyed,
with all his rights and books, a thing which, to speak in few
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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 Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: Into his brazen House, and one by one
The little yellow stars began to stray
Across the field of heaven, ah! then indeed
She feared his lips upon her lips would never care to feed,
And cried, 'Awake, already the pale moon
Washes the trees with silver, and the wave
Creeps grey and chilly up this sandy dune,
The croaking frogs are out, and from the cave
The nightjar shrieks, the fluttering bats repass,
And the brown stoat with hollow flanks creeps through the dusky
grass.
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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 Crowd by Gustave le Bon: by their bloodthirsty, anarchic, and ferocious side, he has
scarcely seen in the heroes of the great drama anything more than
a horde of epileptic savages abandoning themselves without
restraint to their instincts. The violence of the Revolution,
its massacres, its need of propaganda, its declarations of war
upon all things, are only to be properly explained by reflecting
that the Revolution was merely the establishment of a new
religious belief in the mind of the masses. The Reformation, the
massacre of Saint Bartholomew, the French religious wars, the
Inquisition, the Reign of Terror are phenomena of an identical
kind, brought about by crowds animated by those religious
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