| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy: in a depth of shadow--chill, sad, and silent; and it was only by
looking along them towards light spaces beyond that anything or
anybody could be discerned therein. One of these light spots she
found to be caused by a side-door with glass panels in the upper
part. Elfride opened it, and found herself confronting a
secondary or inner lawn, separated from the principal lawn front
by a shrubbery.
And now she saw a perplexing sight. At right angles to the face
of the wing she had emerged from, and within a few feet of the
door, jutted out another wing of the mansion, lower and with less
architectural character. Immediately opposite to her, in the wall
 A Pair of Blue Eyes |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: poems, M. Ohnet's novels, or the plays of Mr. Henry Arthur Jones,
the true critic can, if it be his pleasure so to direct or waste
his faculty of contemplation, produce work that will be flawless in
beauty and instinct with intellectual subtlety. Why not? Dulness
is always an irresistible temptation for brilliancy, and stupidity
is the permanent BESTIA TRIONFANS that calls wisdom from its cave.
To an artist so creative as the critic, what does subject-matter
signify? No more and no less than it does to the novelist and the
painter. Like them, he can find his motives everywhere. Treatment
is the test. There is nothing that has not in it suggestion or
challenge.
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