| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: and women corrupt virgins; lords shall knot and cut paper; and
even the northern people.........:" A Greek phrase (which for
modesty's sake I forbear to translate) which denotes a vice too
frequent amongst us.
That the Ministry foresaw this great change, is plain from the
Callico-Act; whereby it is now become the occupation of women all
over England, to convert their useless female habits into beds,
window-curtains, chairs, and joint-stools; undressing themselves
(as it were) before their transformation.
The philosophy of this transformation will not seem surprizing to
people who search into the bottom of things. Madam Bourignon, a
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: republican, a conspirator, a Frenchman, an old man, who outdid all we
have heard of Negro determination, and all that Cooper tells us of the
tenacity and coolness of the Redskins under defeat. Morey, the
Guatimozin of the "Mountain," preserved an attitude unparalleled in
the annals of European justice.
This is what Marcas told us during the small hours, sandwiching his
discourse with slices of bread spread with cheese and washed down with
wine. All the tobacco was burned out. Now and then the hackney coaches
clattering across the Place de l'Odeon, or the omnibuses toiling past,
sent up their dull rumbling, as if to remind us that Paris was still
close to us.
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