| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: illuminating the banisters with their twisted pillars, and the piles
of plates set on the window-sills, and jars half-full of milk.
Rodney's rooms were small, but the sitting-room window looked out into
a courtyard, with its flagged pavement, and its single tree, and
across to the flat red-brick fronts of the opposite houses, which
would not have surprised Dr. Johnson, if he had come out of his grave
for a turn in the moonlight. Rodney lit his lamp, pulled his curtains,
offered Denham a chair, and, flinging the manuscript of his paper on
the Elizabethan use of Metaphor on to the table, exclaimed:
"Oh dear me, what a waste of time! But it's over now, and so we may
think no more about it."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: had in good report among men.'
She spake and bound beneath her feet her lovely golden
sandals that wax not old, and bare her alike over the wet
sea and over the limitless land, swift as the breath of the
wind. And she seized her doughty spear, shod with sharp
bronze, weighty and huge and strong, wherewith she quells
the ranks of heroes with whomsoever she is wroth, the
daughter of the mighty sire. Then from the heights of
Olympus she came glancing down, and she stood in the land
of Ithaca, at the entry of the gate of Odysseus, on the
threshold of the courtyard, holding in her hand the spear
The Odyssey |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Horse's Tale by Mark Twain: she has her father's vivacity and cheerfulness and pluck and spirit
of enterprise, with the affectionate disposition and sincerity of
both parents.
My sister pined for her Spanish home all these years of exile; she
was always talking of Spain to the child, and tending and
nourishing the love of Spain in the little thing's heart as a
precious flower; and she died happy in the knowledge that the
fruitage of her patriotic labors was as rich as even she could
desire.
Cathy is a sufficiently good little scholar, for her nine years;
her mother taught her Spanish herself, and kept it always fresh
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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 Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: the wishes--and, as I hold, to the just rights--of large portion of
the British nation.
There exists in Britain now, as far as I can see, no one of those
evils which brought about the French Revolution. There is no
widespread misery, and therefore no widespread discontent, among the
classes who live by hand-labour. The legislation of the last
generation has been steadily in favour of the poor, as against the
rich; and it is even more true now than it was in 1789, that--as
Arthur Young told the French mob which stopped his carriage--the
rich pay many taxes (over and above the poor-rates, a direct tax on
the capitalist in favour of the labourer) more than are paid by the
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