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._