| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso: Or hid, he promised gifts or punishment,
His idle charms the false enchanter said,
But in this maze still wandered and miswent,
For Heaven decreed to conceal the same,
To make the miscreant more to feel his shame.
XI
But when the angry king discovered not
What guilty hand this sacrilege had wrought,
His ireful courage boiled in vengeance hot
Against the Christians, whom he faulters thought;
All ruth, compassion, mercy he forgot,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells: and again in this book I have written of England as a feudal
scheme overtaken by fatty degeneration and stupendous accidents
of hypertrophy.
For the last time I must strike that note as the memory of the
dear neat little sunlit ancient Tower of London lying away in a
gap among the warehouses comes back to me, that little
accumulation of buildings so provincially pleasant and
dignified, overshadowed by the vulgarest, most typical exploit
of modern England, the sham Gothic casings to the ironwork of the
Tower Bridge. That Tower Bridge is the very balance and
confirmation of Westminster's dull pinnacles and tower. That
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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 Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: the lips parted with a smile of cruel glee.
"Yes, when is that father of yours going to die?" asked the
seventh, throwing her bouquet at Don Juan with bewitching
playfulness. It was a childish girl who spoke, and the speaker
was wont to make sport of sacred things.
"Oh! don't talk about it," cried Don Juan, the young and handsome
giver of the banquet. "There is but one eternal father, and, as
ill luck will have it, he is mine."
The seven Ferrarese, Don Juan's friends, the Prince himself, gave
a cry of horror. Two hundred years later, in the days of Louis
XV., people of taste would have laughed at this witticism. Or was
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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 Princess by Alfred Tennyson: Quick while I melt; make reconcilement sure
With one that cannot keep her mind an hour:
Come to the hollow hear they slander so!
Kiss and be friends, like children being chid!
~I~ seem no more: ~I~ want forgiveness too:
I should have had to do with none but maids,
That have no links with men. Ah false but dear,
Dear traitor, too much loved, why?--why?--Yet see,
Before these kings we embrace you yet once more
With all forgiveness, all oblivion,
And trust, not love, you less.
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