The Rise of Historical Criticism, published in complete form in 1908, is a mature essay by Oscar Wilde, evaluating the history and current state of criticism. The writer goes back in history and tries to remould the art of criticism with allusions to various critics, genres, and periods. Filled with wit and sublimity, the essay is a comprehensive piece of writing that enlightens the ordinary sense through innovative spirit.

Secrets of the Serpent: In Search of the Sacred Past by Philip Gardiner Across time and across the world, an ancient serpent cult once dominated mankind. Then a great battle ensued and Christianity stamped it's authority on the face of the planet. Now, after years of research, the real religious history of the world can be told. In Secrets of the Serpent, Philip Gardiner for the first time reveals the world's most mysterious places were once sacred to the Serpent Cult. The history and mythology of the so-called reptilian agenda and alien visitation in ancient times now has a solid opponent - giving answers for the many symbols and myths often confused by those who believe in such things. In Secrets of the Serpent, the author reveals the real "bloodline" spoken of by Dan Brown in the Da Vinci Code- it was in fact a serpent bloodline. Philip Gardiner is the international best selling author of The Shining Ones, The Serpent Grail, Gnosis: The Secret of Solomon's Temple Revealed and Proof - Does God Exist? He has appeared on hundreds of radio and television programs worldwide speaking on religion and propaganda. He has infiltrated various secret societies and been initiated into Orders many people had thought were long forgotten. Committed to the constant struggle to uncover the real history of mankind and the unraveling of manipulative propaganda, he has come up against many obstacles and yet in his book, The Serpent Grail he reveals a truth about the Holy Grail that gained the backing of academia and scholars. The truth shall be found in the Secrets of the Serpent

AMONG the many debts which we owe to the supreme aesthetic faculty of Goethe is that he was the first to teach us to define beauty in terms the most concrete possible, to realise it, I mean, always in its special manifestations. So, in the lecture which I have the honour to deliver before you, I will not try to give you any abstract definition of beauty - any such universal formula for it as was sought for by the philosophy of the eighteenth century - still less to communicate to you that which in its essence is incommunicable, the virtue by which a particular picture or poemaffects us with a unique and special joy; but rather to point out to you the general ideas which characterise the great English Renaissance of Art in this century, to discover their source, as far as that is possible, and to estimate their future as far as that is possible.

This is the extraordinary story of the discovery of the ultimate secrets of some of the world's most enigmatic mysteries - including the Holy Grail, the Elixir of Life and the Philosopher's Stone.