How do you view the effect of a spell?
 

When I right click and hold, all I see is what type of magic it uses, the name of the spell, and mana cost. Is there an in game way I can find out what the spell actually does?

Nope. Your best bet is to use the wiki

Ok, thanks for the link...now I get to track down all these level 1 spells that I didn't see at my vendor...Leveled to 3 with just 2 spells haha...

This one is also very useful. It has more info than the wiki, though it is sometimes inaccurate and is Luclin-era.

Funny that, this is the second place where I have seen Boon of the clear mind listed being lvl 52 and c2 listed as being lvl 54 for enchanters.

I played a melee on live so never really paid attention to it back then but it always did seems strange to be that we received c2 before group c1...