| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Legend of Montrose by Walter Scott: deeply impressed with his own subjects of meditation, pays little
attention to exterior objects. An air of gloomy severity, the
fruit perhaps of ascetic and solitary habits, might, in a
Lowlander, have been ascribed to religious fanaticism; but by
that disease of the mind, then so common both in England and the
Lowlands of Scotland, the Highlanders of this period were rarely
infected. They had, however, their own peculiar superstitions,
which overclouded the mind with thick-coming fancies, as
completely as the puritanism of their neighbours.
"His lordship's honour," said the Highland servant sideling up to
Lord Menteith, and speaking in a very low tone, "his lordship
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: I shall know what it means.
"'But I do not wish, understand me, that you should make
restitution because I urge it. Consult your own conscience. An act
of justice such as that ought not to be a sacrifice made to love.
I am your wife and not your mistress, and it is less a question of
pleasing me than of inspiring in my soul a true respect.
"'If I am mistaken, if you have ill-explained your father's
action, if, in short, you still think your right to the property
equitable (oh! how I long to persuade myself that you are
blameless), consider and decide by listening to the voice of your
conscience; act wholly and solely from yourself. A man who loves a
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: short-lived, for he so lacked all statesmanship as to allow the
young Emperor to issue twenty-seven edicts, disposing of
twenty-seven difficult problems such as I have given above in
about twice that many days, and it is this hot-headed and
unstatesman-like young "Confucius" who now calls Yuan Shih-kai
an opportunist and a traitor because he did not enter into the
following plot.
After the Emperor had dismissed two conservative vice-presidents
of a Board, two governors of provinces, and a half dozen other
useless conservative leaders, they plotted to overthrow him by
appealing to the ambition of the Empress Dowager and induce her
|
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 The Aspern Papers by Henry James: of an immense collective apartment, in which Piazza San Marco
is the most ornamented corner and palaces and churches,
for the rest, play the part of great divans of repose,
tables of entertainment, expanses of decoration. And somehow
the splendid common domicile, familiar, domestic, and resonant,
also resembles a theater, with actors clicking over bridges and,
in straggling processions, tripping along fondamentas. As
you sit in your gondola the footways that in certain parts edge
the canals assume to the eye the importance of a stage, meeting it
at the same angle, and the Venetian figures, moving to and fro
against the battered scenery of their little houses of comedy,
|
