| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The United States Bill of Rights: nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,
nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;
nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.
VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a
speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district
wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have
been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature
and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him;
to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor,
and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: previous analysis, simply as engaging passages that had long
re-echoed in my ear.
'I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue,
unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees
her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal
garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.' (4)
Down to 'virtue,' the current S and R are both announced and
repeated unobtrusively, and by way of a grace-note that
almost inseparable group PVF is given entire. (5) The next
phrase is a period of repose, almost ugly in itself, both S
and R still audible, and B given as the last fulfilment of
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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 Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: a certain melancholy about her, nevertheless; for the recollections
of her childhood carried her back to times when it was an awful
thing to be a Protestant. She could remember among them, five-and-
twenty years ago, the burning of poor blind Joan Waste at Derby,
and of Mistress Joyce Lewis, too, like herself, a lady born; and
sometimes even now, in her nightly dreams, rang in her ears her
mother's bitter cries to God, either to spare her that fiery
torment, or to give her strength to bear it, as she whom she loved
had borne it before her. For her mother, who was of a good family
in Yorkshire, had been one of Queen Catherine's bedchamber women,
and the bosom friend and disciple of Anne Askew. And she had sat
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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 Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells: marriage. But she had found it very difficult.
"DEAR MR. MANNING, she had begun. So far it had been plain
sailing, and it had seemed fairly evident to go on: "I find it
very difficult to answer your letter."
But after that neither ideas nor phrases had come and she had
fallen thinking of the events of the day. She had decided that
she would spend the next morning answering advertisements in the
papers that abounded in the writing-room; and so, after half an
hour's perusal of back numbers of the Sketch in the drawing-room,
she had gone to bed.
She found next morning, when she came to this advertisement
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