| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: from a small degree of human reliance on oneself, and such,
in particular, is the happy star of this trade of writing,
that it should combine pleasure and profit to both parties,
and be at once agreeable, like fiddling, and useful, like
good preaching.
This is to speak of literature at its highest; and with the
four great elders who are still spared to our respect and
admiration, with Carlyle, Ruskin, Browning, and Tennyson
before us, it would be cowardly to consider it at first in
any lesser aspect. But while we cannot follow these
athletes, while we may none of us, perhaps, be very vigorous,
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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 Research Magnificent by H. G. Wells: lights and shadows about him changed by imperceptible gradations and
a long pale alley where the native cart track drove into the forest,
opened slowly out of the darkness, slowly broadened, slowly
lengthened. It opened out to him with a quality of invitation. . . .
There was the jungle before him. Was it after all so inaccessible?
"Come!" the road said to him.
Benham rose and walked out a few paces into the moonlight and stood
motionless.
Was he afraid?
Even now some hungry watchful monster might lurk in yonder shadows,
watching with infinite still patience. Kepple had told him how they
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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 The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: slender evidences as you have done hitherto.
It is from you, eloquent oyster-merchants of Billingsgate, (just
ready to be called to the Bar, and quoif'd like your
sister-serjants,) that we expect the shortening the time, and
lessening the expences of law-suits: For I think you are observ'd
to bring your debates to a short issue; and even custom will
restrain you from taking the oyster, and leaving only the shell
to your client.
O ye physicians, (who in the figure of old women are to clean the
tripe in the markets) scour it as effectually as you have done
that of your patients, and the town will fare most deliciously on
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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 Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: child,' I exclaimed at last. 'You interfere with the landscape.'
She leaned back, but she went on interfering with it in terms of
sincerest enthusiasm.
When we stopped at the great archway of entrance I begged to be left
in the carriage. What else could one do, when the golden moment had
come, but sit in the carriage and measure it? They climbed the
broad stone steps together and passed under the lofty gravures into
the garden, and I waited. I waited and remembered. I am not, as
perhaps by this time is evident, a person of overwhelming sentiment,
but I think the smile upon my lips was gentle. So plainly I could
see, beyond the massive archway and across a score of years, all
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