| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle: which poured the sweet yellow sunshine in great floods of golden light.
All about her stood her ladies-in-waiting chatting in low voices,
while she herself sat dreamily where the mild air came softly
drifting into the room laden with the fresh perfumes of the sweet
red roses that bloomed in the great garden beneath the wall.
To her came one who said that her page, Richard Partington,
and four stout yeomen waited her pleasure in the court below.
Then Queen Eleanor arose joyously and bade them be straightway
shown into her presence.
Thus Robin Hood and Little John and Will Scarlet and Allan a Dale came
before the Queen into her own royal bower. Then Robin kneeled before
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: thousand francs were offered for his head. And yet, when he was
shot and sent to Versailles, behold! a common wolf, and even small
for that. 'Though I could reach from pole to pole,' sang Alexander
Pope; the Little Corporal shook Europe; and if all wolves had been
as this wolf, they would have changed the history of man. M. Elie
Berthet has made him the hero of a novel, which I have read, and do
not wish to read again.
I hurried over my lunch, and was proof against the landlady's
desire that I should visit our Lady of Pradelles, 'who performed
many miracles, although she was of wood'; and before three-quarters
of an hour I was goading Modestine down the steep descent that
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