| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: though not always (the female whale, for instance, being larger than the
male); the male also tends to be more pugnacious and less careful of the
young; though to this rule also there are exceptions. In the case of the
South African mierkat, for instance, the female is generally more combative
and more difficult to tame than the male; and it is the males who from the
moment of birth watch over the young with the most passionate and tender
solicitude, keeping them warm under their persons, carrying them to places
of safety in their mouths, and feeding them till full grown; and this they
do not only for their own young, but to any young who may be brought in
contact with them. We have known a male mierkat so assiduous in feeding
young that were quite unrelated to himself, taking to them every morsel of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: upon a silent, smokeless, and dispeopled land. Time and man's
activity have now repaired these ruins; Cassagnas is once more
roofed and sending up domestic smoke; and in the chestnut gardens,
in low and leafy corners, many a prosperous farmer returns, when
the day's work is done, to his children and bright hearth. And
still it was perhaps the wildest view of all my journey. Peak upon
peak, chain upon chain of hills ran surging southward, channelled
and sculptured by the winter streams, feathered from head to foot
with chestnuts, and here and there breaking out into a coronal of
cliffs. The sun, which was still far from setting, sent a drift of
misty gold across the hill-tops, but the valleys were already
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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 Koran: God is the patron of those who believe, He brings them forth from
darkness into light. But those who misbelieve, their patrons are
Taghut, these bring them forth from light to darkness,- fellows of the
Fire, they dwell therein for aye.
Do you not look at him who disputed with Abraham about his Lord,
that God had given him the kingdom? When Abraham said, 'My Lord is
He who giveth life and death,' he said, 'I give life and death.'
Abraham said, 'But verily, God brings the sun from the east, do thou
then bring it from the west? And he who misbelieved was dumbfounded,
for God does not guide unjust folk.
Or like him who passed by a village, when it was desolate and turned
The Koran |
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 Enemies of Books by William Blades: It was from this very work that Shakespeare in all probability
derived the story of the three caskets which in "The Merchant
of Venice" forms so integral a portion of the plot.
Only think of that cloaca being supplied daily with such
dainty bibliographical treasures!
In the Lansdowne Collection at the British Museum is a volume
containing three manuscript dramas of Queen Elizabeth's time, and on
a fly-leaf is a list of fifty-eight plays, with this note at the foot,
in the handwriting of the well-known antiquary, Warburton:
"After I had been many years collecting these Manuscript Playes,
through my own carelessness and the ignorance of my servant,
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