Page:Memoir and correspondence of Caroline Herschel (1876).djvu/101

Rh not be otherwise than painful in any case; but how much more so in this where equal devotion to the same pursuit must have made identity of interest and purpose as complete as it is rare. One who could both feel and express herself so strongly was not likely to fall into her new place without some outward expression of what it cost her—tradition confirms the assumption—and it is easy to understand how this long significant silence is due to the light of later wisdom and calmer judgment which counselled the destruction of all record of what was likely to be painful to survivors. Her later letters abundantly show that she had learned to love the gentle sister-in-law whom she so pathetically entreats to hold on with her in their common old age, and the journals of her astronomical researches sufficiently prove that her zeal in "minding the Heavens" knew no abatement. It was at this period also that she made some of her most important discoveries. Before the end of 1797 she had announced the discovery of eight comets, to five of which the priority of her claim over other observers is unquestioned. A packet, in coarse paper, bearing the superscription, "This is what I call the Bills and Receipts of my Comets," contains some data connected with the discovery of these objects, each folded in a separate paper, and marked "First Comet," "Second Comet," &c., &c. Some of the