| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Professor by Charlotte Bronte: repeat the word, now as I sit alone near midnight. It stirs my
world of the past like a summons to resurrection; the graves
unclose, the dead are raised; thoughts, feelings, memories that
slept, are seen by me ascending from the clods--haloed most of
them--but while I gaze on their vapoury forms, and strive to
ascertain definitely their outline, the sound which wakened them
dies, and they sink, each and all, like a light wreath of mist,
absorbed in the mould, recalled to urns, resealed in monuments.
Farewell, luminous phantoms!
This is Belgium, reader. Look! don't call the picture a flat or
a dull one--it was neither flat nor dull to me when I first
The Professor |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: the universe, is the same as the God which is in you, and is striving to
bring you into harmony with Himself." There is the experimentum crucis.
There is the vast gulf between the Christian and the Heathen schools,
which when any man had overleaped, the whole problem of the universe was
from that moment inverted. With Plotinus and his school man is seeking
for God: with Clement and his, God is seeking for man. With the
former, God is passive, and man active: with the latter, God is active,
man is passive--passive, that is, in so far as his business is to listen
when he is spoken to, to look at the light which is unveiled to him, to
submit himself to the inward laws which he feels reproving and checking
him at every turn, as Socrates was reproved and checked by his inward
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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 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne: obstructed with bushes. I saw then those magnificent birds,
the disposition of whose long feathers obliges them to fly against
the wind. Their undulating flight, graceful aerial curves,
and the shading of their colours, attracted and charmed one's looks.
I had no trouble in recognising them.
"Birds of paradise!" I exclaimed.
The Malays, who carry on a great trade in these birds with the Chinese,
have several means that we could not employ for taking them.
Sometimes they put snares on the top of high trees that the birds
of paradise prefer to frequent. Sometimes they catch them with a
viscous birdlime that paralyses their movements. They even go so far
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea |
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 Domestic Peace by Honore de Balzac: she knew as well as the most accomplished coquette how to raise her
eyes to his at the right moment and drop their lids with assumed
modesty.
When the movement of a new figure, invented by a dancer named Trenis,
and named after him, brought Martial face to face with the Colonel--"I
have won your horse," said he, laughing.
"Yes, but you have lost eighty thousand francs a year!" retorted
Montcornet, glancing at Madame de Vaudremont.
"What do I care?" replied Martial. "Madame de Soulanges is worth
millions!"
At the end of the quadrille more than one whisper was poured into more
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