| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Wheels of Chance by H. G. Wells: Winter Palace indeed, had he had the faintest idea where the
Winter Palace was, and had his assurance amounted to certainty
that the Winter Palace was destroyed. He agreed with her
cordially that the position of women was intolerable, but checked
himself on the' verge of the proposition that a girl ought not to
expect a fellow to hand down boxes for her when he was getting
the 'swap' from a customer. It was Jessie's preoccupation with
her own perplexities, no doubt, that delayed the unveiling of Mr.
Hoopdriver all through Saturday and Sunday. Once or twice,
however, there were incidents that put him about terribly--even
questions that savoured of suspicion.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: rivers, which, though not of any long course, have a very good
appearance for a port, and make it large wharf between them in the
front of the town. And the water here makes a good port for small
ships, though it be at the influx, but not for ships of burthen.
This is the particular town where the Lord-Warden of the Stannaries
always holds his famous Parliament of miners, and for stamping of
tin. The town is well built, but shows that it has been much
fuller, both of houses and inhabitants, than it is now; nor will it
probably ever rise while the town of Falmouth stands where it does,
and while the trade is settled in it as it is. There are at least
three churches in it, but no Dissenters' meeting-house that I could
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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 Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: offended you pours grief on the life of feeling which you had made
so sweet and so rich. The lightest veil that comes between two
souls sometimes grows to be a brazen wall. There are no venial
crimes in love! If you have the very spirit of that noble
sentiment, you must feel all its pangs, and we must be unceasingly
careful not to fret each other by some heedless word.
"No doubt, my beloved treasure, if there is any fault, it is in
me. I cannot pride myself in the belief that I understand a
woman's heart, in all the expansion of its tenderness, all the
grace of its devotedness; but I will always endeavor to appreciate
the value of what you vouchsafe to show me of the secrets of
Louis Lambert |
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: character of the studies, or of the occupations, in which he
involved me, or led me the way. An excited and highly
distempered ideality threw a sulphureous lustre over all. His
long improvised dirges will ring for ever in my ears. Among
other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular
perversion and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of
Von Weber. From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy
brooded, and which grew, touch by touch, into vagueness at which
I shuddered the more thrillingly, because I shuddered knowing not
why;--from these paintings (vivid as their images now are before
me) I would in vain endeavour to educe more than a small portion
The Fall of the House of Usher |
