| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: charmed. She was the idol of the day; reigning the more securely over
Parisian society because she possessed the quality most necessary to
success,--the hand of iron in the velvet glove spoken of by
Bernadotte.
You know the singular characteristics of English people, the distance
and coldness of their own Channel which they put between them and
whoever has not been presented to them in a proper manner. Humanity
seems to be an ant-hill on which they tread; they know none of their
species except the few they admit into their circle; they ignore even
the language of the rest; tongues may move and eyes may see in their
presence but neither sound nor look has reached them; to them, the
The Lily of the Valley |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: the coat and hat of the stranger. But if she lent St. Preux,
or the demi-god of her fancy, his form, she richly repaid him by the
donation of all St. Preux's sentiments and feelings, culled to
gratify her own, to which he seemed to have an undoubted right,
when she read on the margin of an impassioned letter, written in
the well-known hand--"Rousseau alone, the true Prometheus of
sentiment, possessed the fire of genius necessary to pourtray the
passion, the truth of which goes so directly to the heart."
Maria was again true to the hour, yet had finished Rousseau,
and begun to transcribe some selected passages; unable to quit
either the author or the window, before she had a glimpse of the
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