One of Doña Oliva's treatises is upon the _Compostura del Mundo_, which may best be interpreted the Mundane System; herein she laid no claim to the merit of discovery, only to that of briefly explaining what had been treated of by many before her. The mundane system she illustrates by comparing it to a large ostrich's egg, with three whites and eleven shells, our earth being the yolk. The water which according to this theory surrounded the globe she likened to the first or innermost _albumen_, the second and more extensive was the air; the third and much the largest consisted of fire. The eleven shells, were so many leaves one inclosing the other, circle within circle, like a nest of boxes. The first of these was the first heaven wherein the Moon hath her appointed place, the second that of the planet Mercury, the third that of Venus; the fourth was the circle of the Sun; Mars, Jupiter and Saturn moved in the fifth, sixth and seventh; the eighth was the starry sky; the ninth the chrystalline; the tenth the _primum mobile_, which imparted motion to all; and the eleventh was the _immobile_, or empyreum, surrounding all, containing all, and bounding all; for beyond this there was no created thing, either good or evil. A living writer of no ordinary powers agrees in this conclusion with the old philosophers whom Doña Oliva followed; and in declaring his opinion he treats the men of science with as much contempt as they bestow upon their unscientific predecessors in astronomy. Reader if thou art capable of receiving pleasure from such speculations, (and if thou art not, thou art little better than an Oran-Otang) send for a little book entitled the Progress of the Human Mind, its objects, conditions and issue: with the relation which the Progress of Religion bears to the general growth of mind; by the Rev. James Miller. Send also for the “Sibyl's Leaves, or the Fancies, Sentiments and Opinions of Silvanus, miscellaneous, moral and religious,” by the same author, the former published in 1823, the latter in 1829. Very probably you may never have heard of either: but if you are a buyer of books, I say unto you, buy them both. “Infinity,” says this very able and original thinker, “is the retirement in which perfect love and wisdom only dwell with God. “In Infinity and Eternity the sceptic sees an abyss in which all is lost, I see in them the residence of Almighty Power, in which my reason and my wishes find equally a firm support.—Here holding by the pillars of Heaven, I exist—I stand fast. “Surround our material system with a void, and mind itself becoming blind and impotent in attempting to travel through it, will return to our little lights, like the dove which found no rest for the sole of her foot. But when I find Infinity filled with light and life and love, I will come back to you with my olive branch: follow me, or farewell! you shall shut me up in your cabins no more.”