| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: the resort of pilgrims from every part of Europe, and enabled it
to maintain a reputation extending far beyond English shores.
To this fair creation of the great Middle-Age the Dissolution was,
as historians tell us, the death-knell. With the destruction
of the enormous abbey the whole place collapsed in a general ruin:
the Martyr's bones met with the fate of the sacred pile
that held them, and not a stone is now left to tell where
they lie.
The natural picturesqueness and singularity of the town still remain;
but strange to say these qualities, which were noted by many writers
in ages when scenic beauty is said to have been unappreciated,
Jude the Obscure |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: sometimes disappeared, sometimes blinked across at us no brighter
than the eyes of cats; and five steps from one of the lanterns on
the ramparts it was already groping dark. We made haste to lie
down. Had our jailers been upon the watch, they must have observed
our conversation to die out unusually soon. Yet I doubt if any of
us slept. Each lay in his place, tortured at once with the hope of
liberty and the fear of a hateful death. The guard call sounded;
the hum of the town declined by little and little. On all sides of
us, in their different quarters, we could hear the watchman cry the
hours along the street. Often enough, during my stay in England,
have I listened to these gruff or broken voices; or perhaps gone to
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