| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Love and Friendship by Jane Austen: of finding that he is at Naples has turned Roman-Catholic,
obtained one of the Pope's Bulls for annulling his 1st Marriage
and has since actually married a Neapolitan Lady of great Rank
and Fortune. He tells us moreover that much the same sort of
affair has befallen his first wife the worthless Louisa who is
likewise at Naples had turned Roman-catholic, and is soon to be
married to a Neapolitan Nobleman of great and Distinguished
merit. He says, that they are at present very good Freinds, have
quite forgiven all past errors and intend in future to be very
good Neighbours. He invites Matilda and me to pay him a visit to
Italy and to bring him his little Louisa whom both her Mother,
Love and Friendship |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: memory - pour through her eyes a light that shone in her lonely
house. At the end of six months I was fully sure of what this warm
presence made up to her for. We had talked again and again of the
man who had brought us together - of his talent, his character, his
personal charm, his certain career, his dreadful doom, and even of
his clear purpose in that great study which was to have been a
supreme literary portrait, a kind of critical Vandyke or Velasquez.
She had conveyed to me in abundance that she was tongue-tied by her
perversity, by her piety, that she would never break the silence it
had not been given to the "right person," as she said, to break.
The hour however finally arrived. One evening when I had been
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