| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson: The path went down and down into the marsh, till he lost sight of
all the neighbouring landmarks but Kettley windmill on the knoll
behind him, and the extreme top of Tunstall Forest far before. On
either hand there were great fields of blowing reeds and willows,
pools of water shaking in the wind, and treacherous bogs, as green
as emerald, to tempt and to betray the traveller. The path lay
almost straight through the morass. It was already very ancient;
its foundation had been laid by Roman soldiery; in the lapse of
ages much of it had sunk, and every here and there, for a few
hundred yards, it lay submerged below the stagnant waters of the
fen.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: terror was chimerical, they went out of my mind by enchantment, and
I knew no more than the man in the moon about my only occupation.
At Creil, where we stopped to lunch, we left the canoes in another
floating lavatory, which, as it was high noon, was packed with
washerwomen, red-handed and loud-voiced; and they and their broad
jokes are about all I remember of the place. I could look up my
history-books, if you were very anxious, and tell you a date or
two; for it figured rather largely in the English wars. But I
prefer to mention a girls' boarding-school, which had an interest
for us because it was a girls' boarding-school, and because we
imagined we had rather an interest for it. At least - there were
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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 Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: and yet the place is nothing of all that,--it is a desert. Around this
spot without a name stand the Foundling hospital, the Bourbe, the
Cochin hospital, the Capucines, the hospital La Rochefoucauld, the
Deaf and Dumb Asylum, the hospital of the Val-de-Grace; in short, all
the vices and all the misfortunes of Paris find their asylum there.
And (that nothing may lack in this philanthropic centre) Science there
studies the tides and longitudes, Monsieur de Chateaubriand has
erected the Marie-Therese Infirmary, and the Carmelites have founded a
convent. The great events of life are represented by bells which ring
incessantly through this desert,--for the mother giving birth, for the
babe that is born, for the vice that succumbs, for the toiler who
Ferragus |
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 Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: makes no mistakes. I can make all lands break forth into blossom, heap
up their gold and precious stones, and surround myself with fair women
and ever new faces; everything is yielded up to my will. I could
gamble on the Stock Exchange, and my speculations would be infallible;
but a man who can find the hoards that misers have hidden in the earth
need not trouble himself about stocks. Feel the strength of the hand
that grasps you; poor wretch, doomed to shame! Try to bend the arm of
iron! try to soften the adamantine heart! Fly from me if you dare! You
would hear my voice in the depths of the caves that lie under the
Seine; you might hide in the Catacombs, but would you not see me
there? My voice could be heard through the sound of thunder, my eyes
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