Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/84

66 C. H."

From all these gentlemen her labors and discoveries received the most cordial recognition. In his reply, Sir J. Banks said: "I shall take care to make our astronomical friends acquainted with the obligations they are under to your diligence." Mr. Aubert closes his letter with the assurance of the pleasure he felt at her success, and with the offer of any instrument she might wish to use; while Dr. Maskelyne addressed her as his "worthy sister in astronomy."

The fifth comet was discovered December 15, 1791, and all that she says about it is, "My brother wrote an account of it to Sir J. Banks, Dr. Maskelyne, and several other gentlemen." The sixth, found October 8th, is briefly recognized; and the seventh, discovered November 7, 1795, is known as Encke's comet, because he determined its periodicity. It was discovered by four different observers before its identity was recognized. Miss Herschel was its second discoverer in order of time. Her eighth and last comet was discovered August 8. 1797.

We learn from her diary that in October of this year her home with her brother at Slough was broken up, and she went to live in solitude in lodgings, and this mode of life she continued for twenty-five years, till her brother's death, when she left England to join her relations in Hanover. Why she left her brother's house she does not explain, nor is it necessary. In referring to her departure she only says: "My telescopes on the roof, to which I was to have occasional access, as also the room with the sweeping and observing apparatus, remained in their former order, where I most days spent some hours in preparing work to go on with at my lodgings." In a letter to Dr. Maskelyne, written in September, 1798, she says that, during the past year, she has not thought herself "well or in spirits enough to venture from home." She spent her first lonely winter in getting ready for the press some of her own astronomical work.

The account of her life from 1798 until her brother's death, in 1822, occupies about fifty pages of the volume, and consists mostly of extracts from her diary. It is not a record of discoveries or personal triumphs, but of unceasing labor for her brother, knowing no respite in sickness or in health, by night or by day, in winter or in summer, amid hardships and discouragements that never daunted her affectionate nature. During her first year in lodgings, she complains of being harassed by the loss of time in going backward and forward, and by not having immediate access to books and papers; and these troubles, with varying features, pursued her to the end of her brother's life. The first three or four years she changed her lodgings often, but in 1801 she settled in Upton, where she remained till 1810, at which time