| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Passion in the Desert by Honore de Balzac: noise; he sat up, and the deep silence around allowed him to
distinguish the alternative accents of a respiration whose savage
energy could not belong to a human creature.
A profound terror, increased still further by the darkness, the
silence, and his waking images, froze his heart within him. He almost
felt his hair stand on end, when by straining his eyes to their utmost
he perceived through the shadow two faint yellow lights. At first he
attributed these lights to the reflections of his own pupils, but soon
the vivid brilliance of the night aided him gradually to distinguish
the objects around him in the cave, and he beheld a huge animal lying
but two steps from him. Was it a lion, a tiger, or a crocodile?
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: an angel. Mme. de Maufrigneuse for him was still an angel, untouched
by any taint of earth; an angel at the Varietes, where she sat out the
half-obscene, vulgar farces, which made her laugh; an angel through
the cross-fire of highly-flavored jests and scandalous anecdotes,
which enlivened a stolen frolic; a languishing angel in the latticed
box at the Vaudeville; an angel while she criticised the postures of
opera dancers with the experience of an elderly habitue of le coin de
la reine; an angel at the Porte Saint-Martin, at the little boulevard
theatres, at the masked balls, which she enjoyed like any schoolboy.
She was an angel who asked him for the love that lives by self-
abnegation and heroism and self-sacrifice; an angel who would have her
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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 Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke: "You remember Falconer," continued Pierrepont, "Temple Falconer,
that modest, quiet, proud fellow who came out of the South a couple
of years ago and carried off the landscape prize at the Academy last
year, and then disappeared? He had no intimate friends here, and no
one knew what had become of him. But now this picture appears, to
show what he has been doing. It is an evening scene, a revelation
of the beauty of sadness, an idea expressed in colours--or rather, a
real impression of Nature that awakens an ideal feeling in the
heart. It does not define everything and say nothing, like so many
paintings. It tells no story, but I know it fits into one. There
is not a figure in it, and yet it is alive with sentiment; it
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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 Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: The skilly captain, the Cameron,
Went down to that waterside.
Canny and soft the captain went;
And a man of the woody land,
With the shaven head and the painted face,
Went down at his right hand.
It fell in the quiet night,
There was never a sound to ken;
But all of the woods to the right and the left
Lay filled with the painted men.
"Far have I been and much have I seen,
Ballads |
