| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen: young lady been engaged with a volume of the Spectator,
instead of such a work, how proudly would she have
produced the book, and told its name; though the chances
must be against her being occupied by any part of that
voluminous publication, of which either the matter or manner
would not disgust a young person of taste: the substance
of its papers so often consisting in the statement of
improbable circumstances, unnatural characters, and topics
of conversation which no longer concern anyone living;
and their language, too, frequently so coarse as to give
no very favourable idea of the age that could endure it.
 Northanger Abbey |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The King of the Golden River by John Ruskin: asked for it. Then Gluck took some bread in his basket, and the
bottle of water, and set off very early for the mountains.
If the glacier had occasioned a great deal of fatigue in his
brothers, it was twenty times worse for him, who was neither so
strong nor so practiced on the mountains. He had several very bad
falls, lost his basket and bread, and was very much frightened at
the strange noises under the ice. He lay a long time to rest on the
grass, after he had got over, and began to climb the hill just in
the hottest part of the clay. When he had climbed for an hour, he
got dreadfully thirsty and was going to drink like his brothers,
when he saw an old man coming down the path above him, looking very
|