| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Confidence by Henry James: and with their figures reflected as if they had been
standing on a sheet of ice. There was no one in the room;
they were entirely alone.
"Why don't you recognize me?" Bernard murmured quickly.
"Recognize you?"
"Why do you seem to forget our meeting at Siena?"
She might have answered if she had answered immediately;
but she hesitated, and while she did so something happened at
the other end of the room which caused her to shift her glance.
A green velvet porti; agere suspended in one of the door-ways--
not that through which our friends had passed--was lifted,
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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 & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: must be ranked as one of the germs of historical criticism, yet it
was essentially unscientific. Its inherent weakness is clearly
pointed out by Plato, who showed that while this theory will no
doubt explain many of the current legends, yet, if it is to be
appealed to at all, it must be as a universal principle; a position
he is by no means prepared to admit.
Like many other great principles it suffered from its disciples,
and furnished its own refutation when the web of Penelope was
analysed into a metaphor of the rules of formal logic, the warp
representing the premises, and the woof the conclusion.
Rejecting, then, the allegorical interpretation of the sacred
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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 Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: I had time to grow up to some other fruit of the same VENUE.
However, that is disposed of now, and we must just do the
best we can.
I am not aware that there is anything to add; the weather is
hellish, waterspouts, mists, chills, the foul fiend's own
weather, following on a week of expurgated heaven; so it goes
at this bewildering season. I write in the upper floor of my
new house, of which I will send you some day a plan to
measure. 'Tis an elegant structure, surely, and the proid of
me oi. Was asked to pay for it just now, and genteelly
refused, and then agreed, in view of general good-will, to
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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 Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: that refuge.--Then, I declare, I know nothing at all about the matter.--
That, Madam, is the very fault I lay to your charge; and as a punishment
for it, I do insist upon it, that you immediately turn back, that is as
soon as you get to the next full stop, and read the whole chapter over
again. I have imposed this penance upon the lady, neither out of
wantonness nor cruelty; but from the best of motives; and therefore shall
make her no apology for it when she returns back:--'Tis to rebuke a vicious
taste, which has crept into thousands besides herself,--of reading straight
forwards, more in quest of the adventures, than of the deep erudition and
knowledge which a book of this cast, if read over as it should be, would
infallibly impart with them--The mind should be accustomed to make wise
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