| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Duchess of Padua by Oscar Wilde: Guido Ferranti, sir.
DUKE
And you are Mantuan? Look to your wives, my lords,
When such a gallant comes to Padua.
Thou dost well to laugh, Count Bardi; I have noted
How merry is that husband by whose hearth
Sits an uncomely wife.
MAFFIO
May it please your Grace,
The wives of Padua are above suspicion.
DUKE
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: regency of Catherine de Medici; and thus it was to have no
future anywhere else, because the Protestant interest was
bound up with the prosperity of Queen Elizabeth. This
stumbling-block lay at the very threshold of the matter; and
Knox, in the text of the "First Blast," had set everybody the
wrong example and gone to the ground himself. He finds
occasion to regret "the blood of innocent Lady Jane Dudley."
But Lady Jane Dudley, or Lady Jane Grey, as we call her, was
a would-be traitoress and rebel against God, to use his own
expressions. If, therefore, political and religious sympathy
led Knox himself into so grave a partiality, what was he to
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: are to live is, I had almost said, indifferent; after that inside the
garden, we can construct a country of our own. Several old trees, a
considerable variety of level, several well-grown hedges to divide
our garden into provinces, a good extent of old well-set turf, and
thickets of shrubs and ever-greens to be cut into and cleared at the
new owner's pleasure, are the qualities to be sought for in your
chosen land. Nothing is more delightful than a succession of small
lawns, opening one out of the other through tall hedges; these have
all the charm of the old bowling-green repeated, do not require the
labour of many trimmers, and afford a series of changes. You must
have much lawn against the early summer, so as to have a great field
|
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 Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: would fain be her lord and master. He left home with a settled
determination to be extravagant in his behavior; he would say that it
was a matter of life or death to him; he would bring all the resources
of torrid eloquence into play; he would cry that he had lost his head,
that he could not think, could not write a line. The horror that some
women feel for premeditation does honor to their delicacy; they would
rather surrender upon the impulse of passion, than in fulfilment of a
contract. In general, prescribed happiness is not the kind that any of
us desire.
Mme. de Bargeton read fixed purpose in Lucien's eyes and forehead, and
in the agitation in his face and manner, and proposed to herself to
|
