| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson: Prussia; and the Prince is so little of a man, sir, that he holds
the candle. Nor is that the worst of it, for this foreigner and his
paramour are suffered to transact the State affairs, while the
Prince takes the salary and leaves all things to go to wrack. There
will follow upon this some manifest judgment which, though I am old,
I may survive to see.'
'Good man, you are in the wrong about Gondremark,' said Fritz,
showing a greatly increased animation; 'but for all the rest, you
speak the God's truth like a good patriot. As for the Prince, if he
would take and strangle his wife, I would forgive him yet.'
'Nay, Fritz,' said the old man, 'that would be to add iniquity to
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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 Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: single in his aim to express his own moods, he anticipated with
revolutionary courage and frankness all the moods of the rising
generations of the nineteenth century.
The result was inevitable. In the nineteenth century it was no
longer necessary to be a born pattern designer in sound to be a
composer. One had but to be a dramatist or a poet completely
susceptible to the dramatic and descriptive powers of sound. A
race of literary and theatrical musicians appeared; and
Meyerbeer, the first of them, made an extraordinary impression.
The frankly delirious description of his Robert the Devil in
Balzac's short story entitled Gambra, and Goethe's astonishingly
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