| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: Relations and guests gazed at Mademoiselle de Fontaine with mingled
curiosity and pity. The words seemed to declare that fatherly
affection was weary of the contest with a character that the whole
family knew to be incorrigible. The sons-in-law muttered, and the
brothers glanced at their wives with mocking smiles. From that moment
every one ceased to take any interest in the haughty girl's prospects
of marriage. Her old uncle was the only person who, as an old sailor,
ventured to stand on her tack, and take her broadsides, without ever
troubling himself to return her fire.
When the fine weather was settled, and after the budget was voted, the
whole family--a perfect example of the parliamentary families on the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: excellent aphorisms. And in criticising painters so different as
Landseer and Martin, Stothard and Etty, he shows that, to use a
phrase now classical, he is trying 'to see the object as in itself
it really is.'
However, as I pointed out before, he never feels quite at his ease
in his criticisms of contemporary work. 'The present,' he says,
'is about as agreeable a confusion to me as Ariosto on the first
perusal. . . . Modern things dazzle me. I must look at them
through Time's telescope. Elia complains that to him the merit of
a MS. poem is uncertain; "print," as he excellently says, "settles
it." Fifty years' toning does the same thing to a picture.' He is
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: It is remarkable that this town is now so much washed away by the
sea, that what little trade they have is carried on by Walderswick,
a little town near Swole, the vessels coming in there, because the
ruins of Dunwich make the shore there unsafe and uneasy to the
boats; from whence the northern coasting seamen a rude verse of
their own using, and I suppose of their own making, as follows,
"Swoul and Dunwich, and Walderswick,
All go in at one lousie creek."
This "lousie creek," in short, is a little river at Swoul, which
our late famous atlas-maker calls a good harbour for ships, and
rendezvous of the royal navy; but that by-the-bye; the author, it
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