But it is the first volume which is the greatest and most important of the three. It has recently been translated into English by the Rev. Augustus Clissold, and published in two considerable octavos. It is entitled “Principia; or the First Principles of Natural Things, being New Attempts toward a Philosophical Explanation of the Elementary World.” In this volume an attempt is made to explain the generation of the elements, the creation of matter, and the nature of the occult forces playing within nature. To pronounce an absolute opinion upon such a work would be highly hazardous; for positive science at present, affords no sufficient data to test many of its highest reasonings. So far, however, as such tests have been granted, they serve to manifest the fact that among speculative natural philosophers, Swedenborg is second to none. Gœrres, an eminent German philosopher, speaking of the “Principia,” remarks:—“It is a production indicative of profound thought in all its parts, and not unworthy of being placed by the side of Newton’s mathematical ‘Principia of Natural Philosophy.’” We will now adduce a few proofs of the truth of this assertion. Humboldt, in his “Kosmos,” remarks: “That great and enthusiastic although cautious observer, Sir William Herschel, was the first to sound the depths of heaven, in order to determine the limits and form of the starry system we inhabit.” The discovery of the place of our sun and system in the Milky Way, is certainly due to Herschel, but Swedenborg has a prior claim to the honor. In the “Principia,” written four years before Herschel was born, the statement of our sun’s position in the heavens was explicitly made, with the method by which the fact was observed. But this is not all. The changes observed in the planetary orbits, seemed at one time to warrant the belief in a final destruction of all things through the falling of creation into chaos. After awhile, however, La Grange brought forward his beautiful theory, by which was established the doctrine, that though the solar system is liable to certain mutations in the form and eccentricity of its orbits in very long periods, yet in consequence of a certain relation which prevails in the system, between the masses, orbital axes, and eccentricities, in time all orbits return again to what they originally were, oscillating between very narrow limits. This discovery of a cyclar return, confirmed by the most eminent astronomers, is pronounced by Professor Playfair to be, “next to Newton’s discovery of the elliptical orbits of the planets,—without doubt the noblest truth in physical astronomy.” This discovery has also to be claimed for Swedenborg. In his “Principia,” the fact of this cyclar mutation and return of the planets to order, is repeatedly stated, and with great accuracy and plainness. Want of space alone forbids several quotations in proof. It need only be noted that the “Principia” was