The avowed purpose of the volume now before us is to exhibit a wide view of human credulity. "To know"—says Mr. Godwin—"the things that are not, and cannot be, but have been imagined and believed, is the most curious chapter in the annals of man." In extenso we differ with him.
| There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in thy philosophy. |
There are many things, too, in the great circle of human experience, more curious than even the records of human credulity—but that they form one of the most curious chapters, we were at all times ready to believe, and had we been in any degree skeptical, the Lives of the Necromancers would have convinced us.
Unlike the work of Brewster, the Necromancy of Mr. Godwin is not a Treatise on Natural Magic. It does not pretend to show the manner in which delusion acts upon mankind—at all events, this is not the object of the book. The design, if we understand it, is to display in their widest extent, the great range and wild extravagancy of the imagination of man. It is almost superfluous to say that in this he has fully succeeded. His compilation is an invaluable work, evincing much labor and research, and full of absorbing interest. The only drawback to the great pleasure which its perusal has afforded us, is found in the author's unwelcome announcement in the Preface, that for the present he winds up his literary labors with the production of this book. The pen which wrote Caleb Williams, should never for a moment be idle.
Were we to specify any article, in the Necromancy, as more particularly interesting than another, it would be the one entitled 'Faustus.' The prevalent idea that Fust the printer, and Faustus the magician, were identical, is here very properly contradicted.
REV. D. L. CARROLL'S ADDRESS.
Inaugural Address of the Rev. D. L. Carroll, D.D. President of Hampden Sidney College, delivered on his induction into that office. Published by request of the Board of Trustees. Richmond: T. W. White, 1835.
The friends of literature in Virginia have lately been favored with several Inaugural Addresses, each of which has had its peculiar merits. It is only of that whose title has just been given, that we intend to speak. In the correspondence which is prefixed to this Address, we learn that it was "prepared with great haste, amidst anxieties and efforts to regain health, and amidst all the inquietudes of journeying and absence from home." Apologies are seldom worth the time spent in making or reading them. Generally, an author who prints his production may be supposed to consider it of some value. To make an apology, then, similar to that of Mr. Carroll, is but a modest way of hinting that, with a fair trial, the writer could have done much better. On the whole we wish that there had been no apology; for the Address needs none. It is not our purpose to give an outline of this discourse, or enter into a critical examination of its merits—for merits it has. We wish merely to call the attention of the reader to a few extracts, hoping that a perusal of these will induce him to procure and read the whole Address for himself. The first of these extracts is on a subject too long overlooked, and too much neglected in all our schools. We refer to social qualities. On this subject the author's ideas are just and timely. He says: