| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Battle of the Books by Jonathan Swift: free-born officer only for blasphemy was, to speak the gentlest of
such an action, a very high strain of absolute power. Little can
be said in excuse for the general; perhaps he was afraid it might
give offence to the allies, among whom, for aught we know, it may
be the custom of the country to believe a God. But if he argued,
as some have done, upon a mistaken principle, that an officer who
is guilty of speaking blasphemy may, some time or other, proceed so
far as to raise a mutiny, the consequence is by no means to be
admitted: for surely the commander of an English army is like to
be but ill obeyed whose soldiers fear and reverence him as little
as they do a Deity.
|
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 Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: colonies, and sent a harsh and unprincipled soldier to take away
our liberties and endanger our religion. The administration of
Sir Edmund Andros lacked scarcely a single characteristic of
tyranny: a Governor and Council, holding office from the King,
and wholly independent of the country; laws made and taxes levied
without concurrence of the people immediate or by their
representatives; the rights of private citizens violated, and the
titles of all landed property declared void; the voice of
complaint stifled by restrictions on the press; and, finally,
disaffection overawed by the first band of mercenary troops that
ever marched on our free soil. For two years our ancestors were
Twice Told Tales |
