| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Happy Prince and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde: company with the Town Councillors. As they passed the column he
looked up at the statue: "Dear me! how shabby the Happy Prince
looks!" he said.
"How shabby indeed!" cried the Town Councillors, who always agreed
with the Mayor; and they went up to look at it.
"The ruby has fallen out of his sword, his eyes are gone, and he is
golden no longer," said the Mayor in fact, "he is litttle beter
than a beggar!"
"Little better than a beggar," said the Town Councillors.
"And here is actually a dead bird at his feet!" continued the
Mayor. "We must really issue a proclamation that birds are not to
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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 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: discernment, and hiding the emptiness of his mind under the jargon of
good society. After the age of thirty-six he was forced to be as
absolutely indifferent to the fair sex as his master Charles X.,
punished, like that master, for having pleased it too well. For
eighteen years the idol of the faubourg Saint-Germain, he had, like
other heirs of great families led a dissipated life, spent solely on
pleasure. His father, ruined by the revolution, had somewhat recovered
his position on the return of the Bourbons, as governor of a royal
domain, with salary and perquisites; but this uncertain fortune the
old prince spent, as it came, in keeping up the traditions of a great
seigneur before the revolution; so that when the law of indemnity was
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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: which he received an answer, in which Frank said that Will had no
reason to accuse himself; that these strange attachments were due
to a synastria, or sympathy of the stars, which ruled the destinies
of each person, to fight against which was to fight against the
heavens themselves; that he, as a brother of the Rose, was bound to
believe, nay, to assert at the sword's point if need were, that the
incomparable Rose of Torridge could make none but a worthy and
virtuous choice; and that to the man whom she had honored by her
affection was due on their part, Spaniard and Papist though he
might be, all friendship, worship, and loyal faith for evermore.
And honest Will took it all for gospel, little dreaming what agony
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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 The Lamentable Tragedy of Locrine and Mucedorus by William Shakespeare: By Humber's treacheries and fortune's spites.
Cursed be her charms, damned be her cursed charms
That doth delude the wayward hearts of men,
Of men that trust unto her fickle wheel,
Which never leaveth turning upside down.
O gods, O heavens, allot me but the place
Where I may find her hateful mansion!
I'll pass the Alps to watery Meroe,
Where fiery Phoebus in his chariot,
The wheels whereof are decked with Emeralds,
Casts such a heat, yea such a scorching heat,
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