| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Phoenix and the Turtle by William Shakespeare: 'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.
Here the anthem doth commence:
Love and constancy is dead;
Phoenix and the turtle fled
In a mutual flame from hence.
So they lov'd, as love in twain
Had the essence but in one;
Two distincts, division none:
Number there in love was slain.
Hearts remote, yet not asunder;
Distance, and no space was seen
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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 Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: colorless character, sweet and passive. A month after her marriage she
had expectations of becoming a mother. All this was quite in
accordance with ordinary views. M. de Nueil was very nice to her; but
two months after his separation from the Marquise, he grew notably
thoughtful and abstracted. But then he always had been serious, his
mother said.
After seven months of this tepid happiness, a little thing occurred,
one of those seemingly small matters which imply such great
development of thought and such widespread trouble of the soul, that
only the bare fact can be recorded; the interpretation of it must be
left to the fancy of each individual mind. One day, when M. de Nueil
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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 Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: way; it is enough that we write upon them, as was written upon King
Harold's tomb at Waltham Abbey, INFELIX, and let all the rest sleep
among things that are the fittest to be forgotten.
From my Lord Castlemain's, house and the rest of the fine dwellings
on that side of the forest, for there are several very good houses
at Wanstead, only that they seem all swallowed up in the lustre of
his lordship's palace, I say, from thence, I went south, towards
the great road over that part of the forest called the Flats, where
we see a very beautiful but retired and rural seat of Mr.
Lethulier's, eldest son of the late Sir John Lethulier, of Lusum,
in Kent, of whose family I shall speak when I come on that side.
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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 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: what was due to seniority; and for the first evening SHE was his
settled choice. The next morning, however, made an alteration;
for in a quarter of an hour's tete-a-tete with Mrs. Bennet before
breakfast, a conversation beginning with his parsonage-house,
and leading naturally to the avowal of his hopes, that a mistress
might be found for it at Longbourn, produced from her, amid
very complaisant smiles and general encouragement, a caution
against the very Jane he had fixed on. "As to her YOUNGER
daughters, she could not take upon her to say-- she could not
positively answer-- but she did not KNOW of any prepossession;
her ELDEST daughter, she must just mention-- she felt it
Pride and Prejudice |
