| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Economist by Xenophon: till the soil must first be made acquainted with the nature of the
earth."
[1] "They term"; in reference to the author of some treatise.
[2] Or, "the riddling subtlety of tillage." See "Mem." II. iii. 10;
Plat. "Symp." 182 B; "Phileb." 53 E.
[3] Theophr. "De Caus." ii. 4, 12, mentions Leophanes amongst other
writers on agriculture preceding himself.
And they are surely right in their assertion (I replied); for he who
does not know what the soil is capable of bearing, can hardly know, I
fancy, what he has to plant or what to sow.
But he has only to look at his neighbour's land (he answered), at his
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: the inferior classes, arose from the consequences
of the Conquest by Duke William of Normandy.
Four generations had not sufficed to blend the hostile
blood of the Normans and Anglo-Saxons, or to
unite, by common language and mutual interests,
two hostile races, one of which still felt the elation
of triumph, while the other groaned under all the
consequences of defeat. The power bad been completely
placed in the hands of the Norman nobility,
by the event of the battle of Hastings, and it had
been used, as our histories assure us, with no moderate
Ivanhoe |
