| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Professor by Charlotte Bronte: something eventually out of Crimsworth, notwithstanding his
tyranny, or perhaps by means of it, you are what the world calls
an interested and mercenary, but may be a very wise fellow; if
you are patient because you think it a duty to meet insult with
submission, you are an essential sap, and in no shape the man for
my money; if you are patient because your nature is phlegmatic,
flat, inexcitable, and that you cannot get up to the pitch of
resistance, why, God made you to be crushed; and lie down by all
means, and lie flat, and let Juggernaut ride well over you."
Mr. Hunsden's eloquence was not, it will be perceived, of the
smooth and oily order. As he spoke, he pleased me ill. I seem
The Professor |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Essays of Francis Bacon by Francis Bacon: the sun made his body run with sweat, and the
rain washed it. Philip of Macedon dreamed, he
sealed up bis wife's belly; whereby he did expound
it, that his wife should be barren; but Aristander
the soothsayer, told him his wife was with child,
because men do not use to seal vessels, that are
empty. A phantasm that appeared to M. Brutus, in
his tent, said to him, Philippis iterum me videbis.
Tiberius said to Galba, Tu quoque, Galba, degusta-
bis imperium. In Vespasian's time, there went a
prophecy in the East, that those that should come
Essays of Francis Bacon |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: announced a profession was like a tinkle of bluebells; but for
herself her one idea about flowers was that people had them at
funerals, and her present sole gleam of light was that lords
probably had them most. When she watched, a minute later, through
the cage, the swing of her visitor's departing petticoats, she saw
the sight from the waist down; and when the counter-clerk, after a
mere male glance, remarked, with an intention unmistakeably low,
"Handsome woman!" she had for him the finest of her chills: "She's
the widow of a bishop." She always felt, with the counter-clerk,
that it was impossible sufficiently to put it on; for what she
wished to express to him was the maximum of her contempt, and that
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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 A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne: high honour for the humanity of his temper, - I rose up an inch
taller for the accommodation.
- No - said I - the Bourbon is by no means a cruel race: they may
be misled, like other people; but there is a mildness in their
blood. As I acknowledged this, I felt a suffusion of a finer kind
upon my cheek - more warm and friendly to man, than what Burgundy
(at least of two livres a bottle, which was such as I had been
drinking) could have produced.
- Just God! said I, kicking my portmanteau aside, what is there in
this world's goods which should sharpen our spirits, and make so
many kind-hearted brethren of us fall out so cruelly as we do by
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