| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Blix by Frank Norris: unbroken by a single echo.
The night--the last night of the old year--was fine; the white,
clear light from a moon they could not see grew wide and clear
over the city, as the last gleam of the sunset faded. It was just
warm enough for the window to be open, and for nearly three hours
Condy and Blix sat looking down upon the city in these last
moments of the passing year, feeling upon their faces an
occasional touch of the breeze, that carried with it the smell of
trees and flowers from the gardens below them, and the faint fine
taint of the ocean from far out beyond the Heads. But the scene
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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 Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: comparable with the finest things ever invented by religious writers.
"How simple is the structure! Moses opens the attack in G minor,
ending in a cadenza in B flat which allows the chorus to come in,
/pianissimo/ at first, in B flat, returning by modulations to G minor.
This splendid treatment of the voices, recurring three times, ends in
the last strophe with a /stretto/ in G major of absolutely
overpowering effect. We feel as though this hymn of a nation released
from slavery, as it mounts to heaven, were met by kindred strains
falling from the higher spheres. The stars respond with joy to the
ecstasy of liberated mortals. The rounded fulness of the rhythm, the
deliberate dignity of the graduations leading up to the outbursts of
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