| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Adam Bede by George Eliot: cloth cushions; and, to close the vista, there was a crimson
altar-cloth, embroidered with golden rays by Miss Lydia's own
hand.
But even without the crimson cloth, the effect must have been warm
and cheering when Mr. Irwine was in the desk, looking benignly
round on that simple congregation--on the hardy old men, with bent
knees and shoulders, perhaps, but with vigour left for much hedge-
clipping and thatching; on the tall stalwart frames and roughly
cut bronzed faces of the stone-cutters and carpenters; on the
half-dozen well-to-do farmers, with their apple-cheeked families;
and on the clean old women, mostly farm-labourers' wives, with
Adam Bede |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: The whole aristocracy no longer advances in a body to screen the lady.
She has not, like the great lady of the past, the demeanor of lofty
antagonism; she can crush nothing under foot, it is she who would be
crushed. Thus she is apt at Jesuitical /mezzo termine/, she is a
creature of equivocal compromises, of guarded proprieties, of
anonymous passions steered between two reef-bound shores. She is as
much afraid of her servants as an Englishwoman who lives in dread of a
trial in the divorce-court. This woman--so free at a ball, so
attractive out walking--is a slave at home; she is never independent
but in perfect privacy, or theoretically. She must preserve herself in
her position as a lady. This is her task.
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: rid of the money which had so cursed me, and brought my wife to
this, the loneliest and dreariest place in the neighborhood, where
I forced upon her a life of poverty. I thought it was a just
revenge, but I was unjust. She really loved me: she was, if not
quite without blame in the matter, ignorant of the worst that had
been done (I learned all that too late), and she never complained,
though the change in me slowly wore out her life. I know now that
I was cruel; but at the same time I punished myself, and was
innocently punishing my son. But to HIM there was one way to
make amends. `I will help him to a wife,' I said, `who will
gladly take poverty with him and for his sake.' I forced him,
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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 treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: were also published in 1518 by Agricola. Though Luther in the
same year published a series of controversial writings, which
were occasioned by attacks from outside sources, viz., the
Resolutiones disputationis de Virtute indulgentiarum, the
Asterisci adversus obeliscos Joh. Eccii, and the Ad dialogum
Silv. Prieriatis responsio, still he never was diverted by this
necessary rebuttal from his paramount duty, the edification of
the congregation. The autumn of the year 1518, when he was
confronted with Cajetan, as well as the whole year of 1519, when
he held his disputations with Eck, etc., were replete with
disquietude and pressing labors; still Luther served his
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