| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: civilized man, of the attempt to construct society upon a new
basis; and it was there, for the first time, that theories
hitherto unknown, or deemed impracticable, were to exhibit a
spectacle for which the world had not been prepared by the
history of the past.
Chapter I: Exterior Form Of North America
Chapter Summary
North America divided into two vast regions, one inclining
towards the Pole, the other towards the Equator - Valley of the
Mississippi - Traces of the Revolutions of the Globe - Shore of
the Atlantic Ocean where the English Colonies were founded -
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: The name - Ticonderoga,
And the warning of the dead."
Now when the night was over
And the time of people's fears,
The Cameron walked abroad,
And the word was in his ears.
"Many a name I know,
But never a name like this;
O, where shall I find a skilly man
Shall tell me what it is?"
With many a man he counselled
Ballads |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: Roman of distinction was ever sent there as prefect, but the Alexandrian
national vanity and pride of race was allowed to the last to pet itself
by having its tyrant chosen from its own people.
But, though this cannot be, we may find human elements enough in the
schools of Alexandria, strictly so called, to interest us for a few
evenings; for these schools were schools of men; what was discovered and
taught was discovered and taught by men, and not by thinking-machines;
and whether they would have been inclined to confess it or not, their
own personal characters, likes and dislikes, hopes and fears, strength
and weakness, beliefs and disbeliefs, determined their metaphysics and
their physics for them, quite enough to enable us to feel for them as
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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 Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: its fuller chance. He had only had to be at last well out of it to
feel it, oddly enough, still going on.
For this had been all day at bottom the spell of the picture--that
it was essentially more than anything else a scene and a stage,
that the very air of the play was in the rustle of the willows and
the tone of the sky. The play and the characters had, without his
knowing it till now, peopled all his space for him, and it seemed
somehow quite happy that they should offer themselves, in the
conditions so supplied, with a kind of inevitability. It was as if
the conditions made them not only inevitable, but so much more
nearly natural and right as that they were at least easier,
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