| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson: intolerable libel! You are a man; you are old, and might be the
girl's father; you are a gentleman; you are a scholar, and have
learned refinement; and you rake together all this vulgar scandal,
and propose to print it in a public book! Such is your chivalry!
But, thank God, sir, she has still a husband. You say, sir, in that
paper in your hand, that I am a bad fencer; I have to request from
you a lesson in the art. The park is close behind; yonder is the
Pheasant House, where you will find your carriage; should I fall,
you know, sir - you have written it in your paper - how little my
movements are regarded; I am in the custom of disappearing; it will
be one more disappearance; and long before it has awakened a remark,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Twelve Stories and a Dream by H. G. Wells: of the time. They said indeed that the electric trams and the '70
buildings, and that criminal advertisement that glares upon the Forum,
outraged their aesthetic feelings unspeakably; but that was only part
of the fun. And indeed Rome is such a wonderful place that it made
Miss Winchelsea forget some of her most carefully prepared enthusiasms
at times, and Helen, taken unawares, would suddenly admit the beauty
of unexpected things. Yet Fanny and Helen would have liked a shop
window or so in the English quarter if Miss Winchelsea's uncompromising
hostility to all other English visitors had not rendered that district
impossible.
The intellectual and aesthetic fellowship of Miss Winchelsea and
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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 The Jolly Corner by Henry James: more in the likeness of some great glass bowl, all precious concave
crystal, set delicately humming by the play of a moist finger round
its edge. The concave crystal held, as it were, this mystical
other world, and the indescribably fine murmur of its rim was the
sigh there, the scarce audible pathetic wail to his strained ear,
of all the old baffled forsworn possibilities. What he did
therefore by this appeal of his hushed presence was to wake them
into such measure of ghostly life as they might still enjoy. They
were shy, all but unappeasably shy, but they weren't really
sinister; at least they weren't as he had hitherto felt them -
before they had taken the Form he so yearned to make them take, the
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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 The Iliad by Homer: look anxiously for our coming, but the work that we came hither
to do has not been done. Now, therefore, let us all do as I say:
let us sail back to our own land, for we shall not take Troy."
With these words he moved the hearts of the multitude, so many of
them as knew not the cunning counsel of Agamemnon. They surged to
and fro like the waves of the Icarian Sea, when the east and
south winds break from heaven's clouds to lash them; or as when
the west wind sweeps over a field of corn and the ears bow
beneath the blast, even so were they swayed as they flew with
loud cries towards the ships, and the dust from under their feet
rose heavenward. They cheered each other on to draw the ships
The Iliad |
