| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: two or three centuries, and introduced, during
the reign of Richard the First, circumstances
appropriated to a period either considerably
earlier, or a good deal later than that era. It
is my comfort, that errors of this kind will
escape the general class of readers, and that
I may share in the ill-deserved applause of
those architects, who, in their modern Gothic,
do not hesitate to introduce, without rule or
method, ornaments proper to different styles
and to different periods of the art. Those
Ivanhoe |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: crimes; and then I showed, not in word only but in deed, that, if I may be
allowed to use such an expression, I cared not a straw for death, and that
my great and only care was lest I should do an unrighteous or unholy thing.
For the strong arm of that oppressive power did not frighten me into doing
wrong; and when we came out of the rotunda the other four went to Salamis
and fetched Leon, but I went quietly home. For which I might have lost my
life, had not the power of the Thirty shortly afterwards come to an end.
And many will witness to my words.
Now do you really imagine that I could have survived all these years, if I
had led a public life, supposing that like a good man I had always
maintained the right and had made justice, as I ought, the first thing? No
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom by William and Ellen Craft: I found that she made a most respectable looking
gentleman.
My wife had no ambition whatever to assume
this disguise, and would not have done so had it
been possible to have obtained our liberty by more
simple means; but we knew it was not customary
in the South for ladies to travel with male servants;
and therefore, notwithstanding my wife's fair com-
plexion, it would have been a very difficult task for
her to have come off as a free white lady, with me as
her slave; in fact, her not being able to write
Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom |
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 Shadow out of Time by H. P. Lovecraft: lie behind those antique tales of the beings who had dwelt in
this labyrinth of primordial stone?
Words can convey only fractionally
the welter of dread and bewilderment which ate at my spirit. I
knew this place. I knew what lay before me, and what had lain
overhead before the myriad towering stories had fallen to dust
and debris and the desert. No need now, I thought with a shudder,
to keep that faint blur of moonlight in view.
I was torn betwixt
a longing to flee and a feverish mixture of burning curiosity
and driving fatality. What had happened to this monstrous megalopolis
Shadow out of Time |
