The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: the neighbouring counties come into the fair every morning with
beef, mutton, fowls, butter, bread, cheese, eggs, and such things,
and go with them from tent to tent, from door to door, that there
is no want of any provisions of any kind, either dressed or
undressed.
In a word, the fair is like a well-fortified city, and there is the
least disorder and confusion I believe, that can be seen anywhere
with so great a concourse of people.
Towards the latter end of the fair, and when the great hurry of
wholesale business begins to be over, the gentry come in from all
parts of the county round; and though they come for their
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: works of art which abound in Rome. He had already passed a fortnight
in the ecstatic state into which all youthful imaginations fall at the
sight of the queen of ruins, when he happened one evening to enter the
Argentina theatre, in front of which there was an enormous crowd. He
inquired the reasons for the presence of so great a throng, and every
one answered by two names:
" 'Zambinella! Jomelli!'
"He entered and took a seat in the pit, crowded between two
unconscionably stout /abbati/; but luckily he was quite near the
stage. The curtain rose. For the first time in his life he heard the
music whose charms Monsieur Jean-Jacques Rousseau had extolled so
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