| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: stems and spongy roots belong to an animal, or a vegetable.
Animals they are, nevertheless, though even now you will hardly
guess the fact, when you see at the mouth of each tube a little
scarlet flower, connected with the pink pulp which fills the tube.
For a further description of this largest and handsomest of our
Hydroid Polypes, I must refer you to Johnston, or, failing him, to
Landsborough; and go on, to beg you not to despise those pink, or
grey, or white lumps of jelly, which will expand in salt water into
exquisite sea-anemones, of quite different forms from any which we
have found along the rocks. One of them will certainly be the
Dianthus, (27) which will open into a furbelowed flower, furred
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: this hut to us? What do we want with all these things? What are pots
and pans to us?" So saying, he began to knock over the pots and
flasks, and to throw them about.
The poor old woman, well used to such freaks on the part of her
husband, looked sadly on from her seat on the wall-bench. She did not
dare say a word; but when she heard the decision which was so terrible
for her, she could not refrain from tears. As she looked at her
children, from whom so speedy a separation was threatened, it is
impossible to describe the full force of her speechless grief, which
seemed to quiver in her eyes and on her lips convulsively pressed
together.
Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Black Dwarf by Walter Scott: them that ask nought at you."
"What do you do here so far from shelter? Are you benighted on
your journey? Will you follow us home ('God forbid!' ejaculated
Hobbie Elliot, involuntarily), and I will give you a lodging?"
"I would sooner lodge by mysell in the deepest of the Tarras-
flow," again whispered Hobbie.
"Pass on your way," rejoined the figure, the harsh tones of his
voice still more exalted by passion. "I want not your guidance
--I want not your lodging--it is five years since my head was
under a human roof, and I trust it was for the last time."
"He is mad," said Earnscliff.
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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 Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: Nevertheless there are Mennevals to be found, more perhaps in Paris
than elsewhere, men who value a life in the background with its
peaceful toil; these are the wandering Benedictines of our social
world, which offers them no other monastery. These brave, meek hearts
live, by their actions and in their hidden lives, the poetry that
poets utter. They are poets themselves in soul, in tenderness, in
their lonely vigils and meditations,--as truly poets as others of the
name on paper, who fatten in the fields of literature at so much a
verse; like Lord Byron, like all who live, alas, by ink, the
Hippocrene water of to-day, for want of a better.
Attracted by the fame of Canalis, also by the prospect of political
Modeste Mignon |
