| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: secured by any elaborate scheme of learning. Art requires a good
healthy atmosphere. The motives for art are still around about us
as they were round about the ancients. And the subjects are also
easily found by the earnest sculptor and the painter. Nothing is
more picturesque and graceful than a man at work. The artist who
goes to the children's playground, watches them at their sport and
sees the boy stoop to tie his shoe, will find the same themes that
engaged the attention of the ancient Greeks, and such observation
and the illustrations which follow will do much to correct that
foolish impression that mental and physical beauty are always
divorced.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: --an attempt to re-establish a Union by force, which must be the
merest mockery of a Union,--an effort to bring under Federal authority
States into which no loyal man from the North may safely enter,
and to bring men into the national councils who deliberate with daggers
and vote with revolvers, and who do not even conceal their deadly hate
of the country that conquered them; or whether, on the other hand,
we shall, as the rightful reward of victory over treason, have a solid nation,
entirely delivered from all contradictions and social antagonisms,
based upon loyalty, liberty, and equality, must be determined one way
or the other by the present session of Congress. The last session
really did nothing which can be considered final as to these questions.
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