| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Barlaam and Ioasaph by St. John of Damascus: cried out in terror at the invincible power of our God. And all
the region round about, and the greater part of the neighbour
nations, were led, as by the hand, to the true Faith. Then came
the holy Bishop, of whom we have spoken, and King Abenner was
instructed, and made perfect with Holy Baptism, in the name of
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. And Ioasaph
received him as he came up from the Holy Font, in this strange
way appearing as the begetter of his own father, and proving the
spiritual father to him that begat him in the flesh: for he was
the son of his heavenly Father, and verily divine fruit of that
divine Branch, which saith, "I am the vine, ye are the branches."
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: her acquittal."
"How kind and generous you are! every one else believes in her guilt,
and that made me wretched, for I knew that it was impossible:
and to see every one else prejudiced in so deadly a manner
rendered me hopeless and despairing." She wept.
"Dearest niece," said my father, "dry your tears. If she is,
as you believe, innocent, rely on the justice of our laws, and the
activity with which I shall prevent the slightest shadow of partiality."
Chapter 8
We passed a few sad hours until eleven o'clock, when the trial was
to commence. My father and the rest of the family being obliged to
Frankenstein |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Georgics by Virgil: The terrors of her wrath, a plague devised
Against the heifer sprung from Inachus.
From this too thou, since in the noontide heats
'Tis most persistent, fend thy teeming herds,
And feed them when the sun is newly risen,
Or the first stars are ushering in the night.
But, yeaning ended, all their tender care
Is to the calves transferred; at once with marks
They brand them, both to designate their race,
And which to rear for breeding, or devote
As altar-victims, or to cleave the ground
Georgics |
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 House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: conscience of a Pyncheon. If so, we are left to dispose of the
awful query, whether each inheritor of the property-conscious of
wrong, and failing to rectify it--did not commit anew the great
guilt of his ancestor, and incur all its original responsibilities.
And supposing such to be the case, would it not be a far truer
mode of expression to say of the Pyncheon family, that they
inherited a great misfortune, than the reverse?
We have already hinted that it is not our purpose to trace down
the history of the Pyncheon family, in its unbroken connection
with the House of the Seven Gables; nor to show, as in a magic
picture, how the rustiness and infirmity of age gathered over the
House of Seven Gables |
