My learned and reflecting friend, whose original researches have enriched our national history, has this observation on the character of WICKLIFFE: --"To complete our idea of the importance of Wickliffe, it is only necessary to add, that as his writings made John Huss the reformer of Bohemia, so the writings of John Huss led Martin Luther to be the reformer of Germany; so extensive and so incalculable are the consequences which sometimes follow from human actions."[A] Our historian has accompanied this by giving the very feelings of Luther in early life on his first perusal of the works of John Huss; we see the spark of creation caught at the moment: a striking influence of the generation of character! Thus a father-spirit has many sons; and several of the great revolutions in the history of man have been carried on by that secret creation of minds visibly operating on human affairs. In the history of the human mind, he takes an imperfect view, who is confined to contemporary knowledge, as well as he who stops short with the Ancients. Those who do not carry researches through the genealogical lines of genius, mutilate their minds. Such, then, is the influence of AUTHORS!--those "great lights of the world," by whom the torch of genius has been successively seized and perpetually transferred from hand to hand, in the fleeting scene. DESCARTES delivers it to NEWTON, BACON to LOCKE; and the continuity of human affairs, through the rapid generations of man, is maintained from, age to age! [Footnote A: Turner's "History of England," vol. ii. p. 432.] LITERARY MISCELLANIES. * * * * * MISCELLANISTS. Miscellanists are the most popular writers among every people; for it is they who form a communication between the learned and the unlearned, and, as it were, throw a bridge between those two great divisions of the public. Literary Miscellanies are classed among philological studies. The studies of philology formerly consisted rather of the labours of arid grammarians and conjectural critics, than of that more elegant philosophy which has, within our own time, been introduced into literature, and which, by its graces and investigation, augment the beauties of original genius. This delightful province has been termed in Germany the _AEsthetic_, from a Greek term signifying sentiment or feeling. AEsthetic critics fathom the depths, or run with the current of an author's thoughts, and the sympathies of such a critic offer a supplement to the genius of the original writer. Longinus and Addison are AEsthetic critics. The critics of the adverse school always look for a precedent, and if none is found, woe to the originality of a great writer!