THE HISTORY OF MAGIC. BY JOSEPH ENNEMOSER. TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY WILLIAM HOWITT. TO WHICH IS ADDED AN APPENDIX OF THE MOST REMARKABLE AND APPARITIONS, DREAMS, SECOND SIGHT, SOMNAMBULISM, SELECTED BY MARY HOWITT. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON:] HENRY G. BOHN, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. MDCCCLIV. Or the nature and character of a work like the following nothing need be said. It is enough, that at a moment when the public mind occupies itself with the class of subjects on which it treats, the researches of an earnest and indefatigable student cannot be unimportant, even though the reader may not always arrive at the same conclusions that he has done. To those curious in literary history it may not be uninteresting to know that this translation occupied my husband and our eldest son during their voyage to Australia in 1852. And perhaps the Dream of Pre-vision mentioned at page 416 of the Appendix may be explained in part by the mind of the Translator being occupied at the time by the peculiar views of Ennemoser, which predisposed it for occult impressions. This explanation, it appears to me, is rendered still more probable by another little circumstance, which, being no way irrelevant to the subject, I will mention. The printing of this Ennemoser translation had commenced,-and to a certain extent my mind was imbued with the views and speculations of the author,-when, on the night of the 12th of March, 1853, I dreamed that I received a letter from my eldest son. In my dream I eagerly broke open the seal, and saw a closely written sheet of paper, but my eye caught only these words in the middle of the first page, written larger than the rest and underdrawn, "My father is very ill." The utmost distress |