| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: she often left her with a glow of kindness, she returned with the
same chilling air; and, when her heart appeared for a moment to
open, some suggestion of reason forcibly closed it, before she
could give utterance to the confidence Maria's conversation inspired.
Discouraged by these changes, Maria relapsed into despondency,
when she was cheered by the alacrity with which Jemima brought her
a fresh parcel of books; assuring her, that she had taken some
pains to obtain them from one of the keepers, who attended a
gentleman confined in the opposite corner of the gallery.
Maria took up the books with emotion. "They come," said she,
"perhaps, from a wretch condemned, like me, to reason on the nature
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: of the Republic (compare also Alcibiades 1).
There is no criterion of the date of the Symposium, except that which is
furnished by the allusion to the division of Arcadia after the destruction
of Mantinea. This took place in the year B.C. 384, which is the forty-
fourth year of Plato's life. The Symposium cannot therefore be regarded as
a youthful work. As Mantinea was restored in the year 369, the composition
of the Dialogue will probably fall between 384 and 369. Whether the
recollection of the event is more likely to have been renewed at the
destruction or restoration of the city, rather than at some intermediate
period, is a consideration not worth raising.
The Symposium is connected with the Phaedrus both in style and subject;
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Nana, Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille by Emile Zola: her and yet hesitated. One of his friends, a captain who had
recently died in Mexico, had, on the very eve of his departure, made
him one of those gross postprandial confessions, of which even the
most prudent among men are occasionally guilty. But of this he only
retained a vague recollection; they had dined not wisely but too
well that evening, and when he saw the countess, in her black dress
and with her quiet smile, seated in that Old World drawing room, he
certainly had his doubts. A lamp which had been placed behind her
threw into clear relief her dark, delicate, plump side face, wherein
a certain heaviness in the contours of the mouth alone indicated a
species of imperious sensuality.
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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 From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: everywhere in the way, and who with a very little pains a traveller
may always speak with. Nothing can be like it. The Arcadians'
plains, of which we read so much pastoral trumpery in the poets,
could be nothing to them.
This Shaftesbury is now a sorry town upon the top of a high hill,
which closes the plain or downs, and whence Nature presents you a
new scene or prospect--viz., of Somerset and Wiltshire--where it is
all enclosed, and grown with woods, forests, and planted hedge-
rows; the country rich, fertile, and populous; the towns and houses
standing thick and being large and full of inhabitants, and those
inhabitants fully employed in the richest and most valuable
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