| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: sufferings of the retreat from Moscow; for, at nineteen years of age,
he had made the passage of the Beresins, and was almost the last man
left of his regiment. He described, in words of fire, the great
disaster of Waterloo. His voice was music itself to the Italian girl.
Brought up as a Corsican, Ginevra was, in some sense, a child of
Nature; falseness was a thing unknown to her; she gave herself up
without reserve to her impressions; she acknowledged them, or, rather,
allowed them to be seen without the affectations of petty and
calculating coquetry, characteristic of Parisian girlhood. During this
day she sat more than once with her palette in one hand, her brushes
in another, without touching a color. With her eyes fastened on the
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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 Altar of the Dead by Henry James: were now unable to breathe. The candles might mechanically burn,
but each of them had lost its lustre. The church had become a
void; it was his presence, her presence, their common presence,
that had made the indispensable medium. If anything was wrong
everything was - her silence spoiled the tune.
Then when three months were gone he felt so lonely that he went
back; reflecting that as they had been his best society for years
his Dead perhaps wouldn't let him forsake them without doing
something more for him. They stood there, as he had left them, in
their tall radiance, the bright cluster that had already made him,
on occasions when he was willing to compare small things with
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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 Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: happen'd; but upon reviewing my schemes, I quickly found the
cause of that error. I likewise foretold the Battle of Almanza to
the very day and hour, with the loss on both sides, and the
consequences thereof. All which I shewed to some friends many
months before they happened, that is, I gave them papers sealed
up, to open at such a time, after which they were at liberty to
read them; and there they found my predictions true in every
article, except one or two, very minute.
As for the few following predictions I now offer the world, I
forbore to publish them till I had perused the several almanacks
for the year we are now enter'd on. I find them in all the usual
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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 Bucolics by Virgil: Prevailed not to obtain- with brass, you see,
And equal knots, Menalcas, fashioned fair!
ECLOGUE VI
TO VARUS
First my Thalia stooped in sportive mood
To Syracusan strains, nor blushed within
The woods to house her. When I sought to tell
Of battles and of kings, the Cynthian god
Plucked at mine ear and warned me: "Tityrus,
Beseems a shepherd-wight to feed fat sheep,
But sing a slender song." Now, Varus, I-
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