| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: delicate refinement, will prefer to look into the silver mirror or
through the woven veil, and will turn his eyes away from the chaos
and clamour of actual existence, though the mirror be tarnished and
the veil be torn. His sole aim is to chronicle his own
impressions. It is for him that pictures are painted, books
written, and marble hewn into form.
ERNEST. I seem to have heard another theory of Criticism.
GILBERT. Yes: it has been said by one whose gracious memory we
all revere, and the music of whose pipe once lured Proserpina from
her Sicilian fields, and made those white feet stir, and not in
vain, the Cumnor cowslips, that the proper aim of Criticism is to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: Monsieur's lawyer."
"You are certain of what you say?"
Joseph was speechless. I saw plainly that I must interfere, as I
happened to be again in Eugene's apartment.
"Joseph is right," I said.
Eugene turned and looked at me.
"I read the addresses quite involuntarily, and--"
"And," interrupted Eugene, "one of them was NOT for Madame de
Nucingen?"
"No, by all the devils, it was not. Consequently, I supposed, my dear
fellow, that your heart was wandering from the rue Saint-Lazare to the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Off on a Comet by Jules Verne: be compared to two scarecrows which, though perfectly harmless
in themselves, inspire some measure of respect, and are excellently
adapted to protect the territory intrusted to their guardianship.
English-like, the two officers had made themselves thoroughly at home
in the station abroad in which it had been their lot to be quartered.
The faculty of colonization seems to be indigenous to the native character;
once let an Englishman plant his national standard on the surface of the moon,
and it would not be long before a colony was established round it.
The officers had a servant, named Kirke, and a company of ten
soldiers of the line. This party of thirteen men were apparently
the sole survivors of an overwhelming catastrophe, which on the 1st
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