| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: vessels, which cost nothing but the caption, were bought cheap,
carried great burthens, and the Ipswich building fell off for want
of price, and so the trade decayed, and the town with it. I
believe this will be owned for the true beginning of their decay,
if I must allow it to be called a decay.
But to return to my passage up the river. In the winter-time those
great collier ships, above-mentioned, are always laid up, as they
call it; that is to say, the coal trade abates at London, the
citizens are generally furnished, their stores taken in, and the
demand is over; so that the great ships, the northern seas and
coast being also dangerous, the nights long, and the voyage
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: conducted me, in silence, through many dark and intricate
passages in my progress to the studio of his master. Much
that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to
heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken.
While the objects around me--while the carvings of the ceilings,
the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the
floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as
I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had
been accustomed from my infancy--while I hesitated not to
acknowledge how familiar was all this--I still wondered to find
how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were
The Fall of the House of Usher |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Land that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: held to its mother ship by a single rope which finally parted to
the enormous strain put upon it. In no other way can I account
for its having leaped so far out of the water--a beneficent
circumstance to which I doubtless owe my life, and that of
another far dearer to me than my own. I say beneficent
circumstance even in the face of the fact that a fate far more
hideous confronts us than that which we escaped that day; for
because of that circumstance I have met her whom otherwise I
never should have known; I have met and loved her. At least I
have had that great happiness in life; nor can Caspak, with all
her horrors, expunge that which has been.
The Land that Time Forgot |
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 A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: apparent danger to themselves, they were
willing enough to help and relieve them. But as every town were
indeed judges in their own case, so the poor people who ran abroad in
their extremities were often ill-used and driven back again into the
town; and this caused infinite exclamations and outcries against the
country towns, and made the clamour very popular.
And yet, more or less, maugre all the caution, there was not a town
of any note within ten (or, I believe, twenty) miles of the city but what
was more or less infected and had some died among them. I have
heard the accounts of several, such as they were reckoned up, as follows: -
In Enfield 32 In Uxbridge 117
A Journal of the Plague Year |
