| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War by Frederick A. Talbot: the compass were an infallible guide the airman would be able to
complete a given journey in dense fog just as easily as in clear
weather. It is the action of the cross currents and the
unconscious drift which render movement in the air during fog as
impracticable with safety as manoeuvring through the water under
similar conditions. More than one bold and skilful aviator has
essayed the crossing of the English Channel and, being overtaken
by fog, has failed to make the opposite coast. His compass has
given him the proper direction, but the side-drift has proved his
undoing, with the result that he has missed his objective.
The fickle character of the winds over the water, especially over
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: practise the self-control and physical training that is expected
as a matter of course from an acrobat, a jockey or a pugilist.
The women's dresses are prudish and absurd. It is true that
Kundry no longer wears an early Victorian ball dress with
"ruchings," and that Fresh has been provided with a quaintly
modish copy of the flowered gown of Spring in Botticelli's famous
picture; but the mailclad Brynhild still climbs the mountains
with her legs carefully hidden in a long white skirt, and looks
so exactly like Mrs. Leo Hunter as Minerva that it is quite
impossible to feel a ray of illusion whilst looking at her. The
ideal of womanly beauty aimed at reminds Englishmen of the
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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 Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: for the time being. And he had seen the frescos of the Vatican,
and heard Palestrina preside as chapel-master over the performance
of his own music beneath the dome of St. Peter's, and fallen half
in love with those luscious strains, till he was awakened from his
dream by the recollection that beneath that same dome had gone up
thanksgivings to the God of heaven for those blood-stained streets,
and shrieking women, and heaps of insulted corpses, which he had
beheld in Paris on the night of St. Bartholomew. At last, a few
months before his father died, he had taken back his pupils to
their home in Germany, from whence he was dismissed, as he wrote,
with rich gifts; and then Mrs. Leigh's heart beat high, at 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 House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: whose intercourse Hawthorne greatly enjoyed, Henry James, Sr.,
Doctor Holmes, J. T. Headley, James Russell Lowell, Edwin P.
Whipple, Frederika Bremer, and J. T. Fields; so that there was
no lack of intellectual society in the midst of the beautiful
and inspiring mountain scenery of the place. "In the afternoons,
nowadays," he records, shortly before beginning the work, "this
valley in which I dwell seems like a vast basin filled with golden
Sunshine as with wine;" and, happy in the companionship of his
wife and their three children, he led a simple, refined, idyllic
life, despite the restrictions of a scanty and uncertain income.
A letter written by Mrs. Hawthorne, at this time, to a member of
House of Seven Gables |
