| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: from the oppression of surroundings oversadly tinged.
Haggard Egdon appealed to a subtler and scarcer instinct,
to a more recently learnt emotion, than that which responds
to the sort of beauty called charming and fair.
Indeed, it is a question if the exclusive reign of this
orthodox beauty is not approaching its last quarter.
The new Vale of Tempe may be a gaunt waste in Thule;
human souls may find themselves in closer and closer harmony
with external things wearing a sombreness distasteful
to our race when it was young. The time seems near,
if it has not actually arrived, when the chastened
Return of the Native |
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 Lady Susan by Jane Austen: myself as soon as my eyes would let me, to point out, as well as I could,
the danger of an intimate acquaintance, with so artful a woman as Lady
Susan, to a young man of his age, and high expectations. I meant,
moreover, to have reminded him of our being quite alone now, and very much
in need of him to keep up our spirits these long winter evenings. Whether
it would have done any good can never be settled now, but I am excessively
vexed that Sir Reginald should know anything of a matter which we foresaw
would make him so uneasy. He caught all your fears the moment he had read
your letter, and I am sure he has not had the business out of his head
since. He wrote by the same post to Reginald a long letter full of it all,
and particularly asking an explanation of what he may have heard from Lady
Lady Susan |
