| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott: Germain's; here one who had taken arms for William at the
Revolution; and there a third that had thrown his weight
alternately into the scale of Whig and Tory.
While lord Woodville was cramming these words into his guest's
ear, "against the stomach of his sense," they gained the middle
of the gallery, when he beheld General Browne suddenly start, and
assume an attitude of the utmost surprise, not unmixed with fear,
as his eyes were suddenly caught and riveted by a portrait of an
old lady in a sacque, the fashionable dress of the end of the
seventeenth century.
"There she is!" he exclaimed--"there she is, in form and
|
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 A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: consoling temptation? Nevertheless, it was a form of
self-indulgence, and the ingenious hidalgo of La Mancha was not a
good citizen. The priest and the barber were not unreasonable in
their strictures. Without going so far as the old King
Louis-Philippe, who used to say in his exile, "The people are
never in fault"--one may admit that there must be some
righteousness in the assent of a whole village. Mad! Mad! He
who kept in pious meditation the ritual vigil-of-arms by the well
of an inn and knelt reverently to be knighted at daybreak by the
fat, sly rogue of a landlord has come very near perfection. He
rides forth, his head encircled by a halo--the patron saint of
A Personal Record |
