| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Legend of Montrose by Walter Scott: As deft and tight as ever wore
A durk, a targe, and a claymore,
Short hose, and belted plaid or trews,
In Uist, Lochaber, Skye, or Lewes,
Or cover'd hard head with his bonnet;
Had you but known them, you would own it. MESTON.
A hill was now before the travellers, covered with an ancient
forest of Scottish firs, the topmost of which, flinging their
scathed branches across the western horizon, gleamed ruddy in the
setting sun. In the centre of this wood rose the towers, or
rather the chimneys, of the house, or castle, as it was called,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Letters from England by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft: as I intended, I left her to see "Sir Roger de Coverly," in the
dress of his time.
Last night at Mr. Putnam's, I met William and Mary Howitt, and some
of the lesser lights. I have put down my pen to answer a note, just
brought in, to dine next Thursday with the Dowager Countess of
Charleville, where we were last week, in the evening. She is
eighty-four (tell this to Grandmamma) and likes still to surround
herself with BEAUX and BELLES ESPRITS, and as her son and daughter
reside with her, this is still easy . . . The old lady talks French
as fast as possible, and troubles me somewhat by talking it to me,
forgetting that a foreign minister's wife can talk English . . .
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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 Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: appertained.
Oftentimes it was her custom to climb the weary staircase that
wound upward to the cupola, and thence strain her dimmed eyesight
seaward and countryward, watching for a British fleet, or for the
march of a grand procession, with the King's banner floating over
it. The passengers in the street below would discern her anxious
visage, and send up a shout, "When the golden Indian on the
Province House shall shoot his arrow, and when the cock on the
Old South spire shall crow, then look for a Royal Governor
again!"--for this had grown a byword through the town. And at
last, after long, long years, old Esther Dudley knew, or
Twice Told Tales |
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 Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: and with persons it is always the other way about--and who is
there among us who has not felt the pangs of injured innocence,
and known them to be grievous?
I have two visitors staying with me, though I have done nothing
to provoke such an infliction, and had been looking forward to a happy
little Christmas alone with the Man of Wrath and the <134> babies.
Fate decreed otherwise. Quite regularly, if I look forward to anything,
Fate steps in and decrees otherwise; I don't know why it should, but it does.
I had not even invited these good ladies--like greatness on the modest,
they were thrust upon me. One is Irais, the sweet singer of the summer,
whom I love as she deserves, but of whom I certainly thought I had seen
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
