| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: look like iron, or iron to look like stone. It is a practical
school of morals. No better way is there to learn to love Nature
than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field.
And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing
becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw
the customary stone. What we want is something spiritual added to
life. Nothing is so ignoble that Art cannot sanctify it.
ART AND THE HANDICRAFTSMAN
PEOPLE often talk as if there was an opposition between what is
beautiful and what is useful. There is no opposition to beauty
except ugliness: all things are either beautiful or ugly, and
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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 Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: thirty miles' distance, to know that he was hanging in the
orchard, especially as he had left Kimballton before the
unfortunate man was hanged at all? These ambiguous circumstances,
with the stranger's surprise and terror, made Dominicus think of
raising a hue and cry after him, as an accomplice in the murder;
since a murder, it seemed, had really been perpetrated.
"But let the poor devil go," thought the pedlar. "I don't want
his black blood on my head; and hanging the nigger wouldn't
unhang Mr. Higginbotham. Unhang the old gentleman; It's a sin, I
know; but I should hate to have him come to life a second time,
and give me the lie!"
Twice Told Tales |
