| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: whenever he began to relate one, by the readiness with which it
adapted itself to the childish purity of his auditors. The
objectionable characteristics seem to be a parasitical growth,
having no essential connection with the original fable. They
fall away, and are thought of no more, the instant he puts his
imagination in sympathy with the innocent little circle, whose
wide-open eyes are fixed so eagerly upon him. Thus the stories
(not by any strained effort of the narrator's, but in harmony
with their inherent germ) transform themselves, and re-assume
the shapes which they might be supposed to possess in the pure
childhood of the world. When the first poet or romancer told
Tanglewood Tales |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: education. I appeal to the learned world, whether in my last
year's predictions I gave him the least provocation for such
unworthy treatment. Philosophers have differed in all ages; but
the discreetest among them have always differed as became
philosophers. Scurrility and passion, in a controversy among
scholars, is just so much of nothing to the purpose, and at best,
a tacit confession of a weak cause: My concern is not so much for
my own reputation, as that of the Republick of Letters, which Mr.
Partridge hath endeavoured to wound through my sides. If men of
publick spirit must be superciliously treated for their ingenious
attempts, how will true useful knowledge be ever advanced? I wish
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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 Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: masquerade, with fox-skin cap, belted great-coat, and great
Highland broadsword. He liked dressing up, in fact, for its
own sake. This is the spirit which leads to the extravagant
array of Latin Quarter students, and the proverbial velveteen
of the English landscape-painter; and, though the pleasure
derived is in itself merely personal, it shows a man who is,
to say the least of it, not pained by general attention and
remark. His father wrote the family name BURNES; Robert
early adopted the orthography BURNESS from his cousin in the
Mearns; and in his twenty-eighth year changed it once more to
BURNS. It is plain that the last transformation was not made
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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 Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: the Firth extends on either hand from the Ferry to the
May; the towns of Fifeshire sit, each in its bank of
blowing smoke, along the opposite coast; and the hills
enclose the view, except to the farthest east, where the
haze of the horizon rests upon the open sea. There lies
the road to Norway: a dear road for Sir Patrick Spens and
his Scots Lords; and yonder smoke on the hither side of
Largo Law is Aberdour, from whence they sailed to seek a
queen for Scotland.
'O lang, lang, may the ladies sit,
Wi' their fans into their hand,
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