| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens: themselves were chargeable with the uses of the block, the rack,
the gibbet, and the stake in cruel Mary's reign.
The clock was on the stroke of one, when Gabriel Varden, with his
lady and Miss Miggs, sat waiting in the little parlour. This fact;
the toppling wicks of the dull, wasted candles; the silence that
prevailed; and, above all, the nightcaps of both maid and matron,
were sufficient evidence that they had been prepared for bed some
time ago, and had some reason for sitting up so far beyond their
usual hour.
If any other corroborative testimony had been required, it would
have been abundantly furnished in the actions of Miss Miggs, who,
Barnaby Rudge |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: for near a hundred years; it is highly genteel, for it treats
of a titled family; and it ought to be melodramatic, for
(according to the superscription) it is concerned with
death.'
'I think I rarely heard a more obscure or a more promising
annunciation,' the other remarked. 'But what is It?'
'You remember my predecessor's, old Peter M'Brair's
business?'
'I remember him acutely; he could not look at me without a
pang of reprobation, and he could not feel the pang without
betraying it. He was to me a man of a great historical
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