| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: down in a shabby armchair placed before a little table above which
hung a mirror. She rested her elbows on the table, put her head in her
hands, and sat thinking for an hour, calling to memory the Marais, the
village of Pen-Hoel, the perilous voyages on a pond in a boat untied
for her from an old willow by little Jacques; then the old faces of
her grandfather and grandmother, the sufferings of her mother, and the
handsome face of Major Brigaut,--in short, the whole of her careless
childhood. It was all a dream, a luminous joy on the gloomy background
of the present.
Her beautiful chestnut hair escaped in disorder from her cap, rumpled
in sleep,--a cambric cap with ruffles, which she had made herself. On
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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: They are defects, not in the heart, but in the brain;
for they take place in the stoutest natures; as in the
example of Henry the Seventh of England. There
was not a more suspicious man, nor a more stout.
And in such a composition they do small hurt. For
commonly they are not admitted, but with exami-
nation, whether they be likely or no. But in fearful
natures they gain ground too fast. There is nothing
makes a man suspect much, more than to know
little; and therefore men should remedy suspicion,
by procuring to know more, and not to keep their
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 Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: she must bear every thing. Her pale face, on which appeared a
thousand haggard lines and delving wrinkles, produced by what is
emphatically termed fretting, inforced her remark; and I had
afterwards an opportunity of observing the treatment she had to
endure, which grizzled her into patience. She toiled from morning
till night; yet her husband would rob the till, and take away the
money reserved for paying bills; and, returning home drunk, he
would beat her if she chanced to offend him, though she had a child
at the breast.
"These scenes awoke me at night; and, in the morning,
I heard her, as usual, talk to her dear Johnny--he, forsooth,
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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 The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: which were entitled "The Haunted Palace," ran very nearly, if not
accurately, thus:
I.
In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace--
Radiant palace--reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion--
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.
The Fall of the House of Usher |
