| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Paradise Lost by John Milton: Their branches hung with copious fruit, or gemmed
Their blossoms: With high woods the hills were crowned;
With tufts the valleys, and each fountain side;
With borders long the rivers: that Earth now
Seemed like to Heaven, a seat where Gods might dwell,
Or wander with delight, and love to haunt
Her sacred shades: though God had yet not rained
Upon the Earth, and man to till the ground
None was; but from the Earth a dewy mist
Went up, and watered all the ground, and each
Plant of the field; which, ere it was in the Earth,
Paradise Lost |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Europeans by Henry James: should declare, as he repeatedly did, that he was really not an artist.
"I have never gone into the thing seriously," he said. "I have never studied;
I have had no training. I do a little of everything, and nothing well.
I am only an amateur."
It pleased Gertrude even more to think that he was an amateur
than to think that he was an artist; the former word, to her fancy,
had an even subtler connotation. She knew, however, that it
was a word to use more soberly. Mr. Wentworth used it freely;
for though he had not been exactly familiar with it, he found it
convenient as a help toward classifying Felix, who, as a young man
extremely clever and active and apparently respectable and yet not
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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 Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte: 'And do you DETEST him, Miss Murray?' said I, for I was too much
shocked to remember her name at the moment.
'Yes, I do, Miss Grey, and despise him too; and if you knew him you
would not blame me.'
'But you knew what he was before you married him.'
'No; I only thought so: I did not half know him really. I know
you warned me against it, and I wish I had listened to you: but
it's too late to regret that now. And besides, mamma ought to have
known better than either of us, and she never said anything against
it - quite the contrary. And then I thought he adored me, and
would let me have my own way: he did pretend to do so at first,
Agnes Grey |
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 Off on a Comet by Jules Verne: if the last, it would be sure, sooner or later, after some periodic interval,
to return.
From the _prima facie_ appearance of his papers, then, it seemed probable
that the astronomer, during his sojourn at Formentera, had been devoting
himself to the study of cometary orbits; and as calculations of this kind
are ordinarily based upon the assumption that the orbit is a parabola,
it was not unlikely that he had been endeavoring to trace the path
of some particular comet.
"I wonder whether these calculations were made before or after the 1st
of January; it makes all the difference," said Lieutenant Procope.
"We must bide our time and hear," replied the count.
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