disadvantages, at any rate it is good for us to call up in review
things, which are now passed away, but which once occupied so large a
share of the thoughts and attention of mankind, and in a great degree
tended to modify their characters and dictate their resolutions.

As has already been said, numbers of those who were endowed with the
highest powers of human intellect, such as, if they had lived in these
times, would have aspired to eminence in the exact sciences, to the
loftiest flights of imagination, or to the discovery of means by which
the institutions of men in society might be rendered more beneficial
and faultless, at that time wasted the midnight oil in endeavouring to
trace the occult qualities and virtues of things, to render invisible
spirits subject to their command, and to effect those wonders, of
which they deemed themselves to have a dim conception, but which more
rational views of nature have taught us to regard as beyond our power
to effect. These sublime wanderings of the mind are well entitled to
our labour to trace and investigate. The errors of man are worthy to
be recorded, not only as beacons to warn us from the shelves where our
ancestors have made shipwreck, but even as something honourable to our
nature, to show how high a generous ambition could sour, though in
forbidden paths, and in things too wonderful for us.

Nor only is this subject inexpressibly interesting, as setting before
us how the loftiest and most enterprising minds of ancient days
formerly busied themselves. It is also of the highest importance to an
ingenuous curiosity, inasmuch as it vitally affected the fortunes of
so considerable a portion of the mass of mankind. The legislatures of
remote ages bent all their severity at different periods against what
they deemed the unhallowed arts of the sons and daughters of
reprobation. Multitudes of human creatures have been sacrificed in