| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: its entire absence, as an external appendage, must very largely
affect the countenance of the whale. For as in landscape gardening,
a spire, cupola, monument, or tower of some sort, is deemed almost
indispensable to the completion of the scene; so no face can be
physiognomically in keeping without the elevated open-work belfry of
the nose. Dash the nose from Phidias's marble Jove, and what a sorry
remainder! Nevertheless, Leviathan is of so mighty a magnitude, all
his proportions are so stately, that the same deficiency which in the
sculptured Jove were hideous, in him is no blemish at all. Nay, it
is an added grandeur. A nose to the whale would have been
impertinent. As on your physiognomical voyage you sail round his
Moby Dick |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lucile by Owen Meredith: Upon his low pallet. These thoughts, vaguely flitting,
Cross'd the silence between him and death, which seem'd near,
--"Pain o'erreaches itself, so is balk'd! else, how bear
This intense and intolerable solitude,
With its eye on my heart and its hand on my blood?
Pulse by pulse! Day goes down: yet she comes not again.
Other suffering, doubtless, where hope is more plain,
Claims her elsewhere. I die, strange! and scarcely feel sad.
Oh, to think of Constance THUS, and not to go mad!
But Death, it would seem, dulls the sense to his own
Dull doings . . ."
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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 The Lamentable Tragedy of Locrine and Mucedorus by William Shakespeare: We feel the heat of extreme misery.
Now am I in favour about the court and country.
To morrow those favours will turn to frowns:
To day I live revenged on my foe,
To morrow I die, my foe revenged on me.
[Exit.]
ACT II. SCENE III. The Forest.
[Enter Bremo, a wild man.]
BREMO.
No passengers this morning? what, not one?
A chance that seldom doth befall.
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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 Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock: An arrow, with a letter attached to it, was shot into the camp,
and carried to the prince. The contents were these:--
"Prince John,--I do not consider myself to have resisted lawful authority
in defending my castle against you, seeing that you are at present
in a state of active rebellion against your liege sovereign Richard:
and if my provisions had not failed me, I would have maintained it
till doomsday. As it is, I have so well disposed my combustibles
that it shall not serve you as a strong hold in your rebellion.
If you hunt in the chases of Nottinghamshire, you may catch other
game than my daughter. Both she and I are content to be houseless
for a time, in the reflection that we have deserved your enmity,
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