CAROLINE HERSCHEL'S EIGHT COMETS 81 



amused herself by sweeping the heavens for comets 

 with a five-feet reflector, of which her brother had 

 made her a present. She was so successful that her 

 fame soon sounded over Europe. " Miss Herschel," one 

 writer reports, " sister of the celebrated astronomer, 

 has observed a comet, and its orbit has been calculated. 

 This is the seventy-third comet of which we know 

 the period." This celestial visitor was talked of in 

 Windsor Castle as the Lady's Comet. Unfortunately, 

 the name was not retained, as it ought to have been, 

 or at least given to a later discovery by Miss Herschel. 

 Between 1786 and 1797 she discovered eight comets 

 altogether, but of only five was she the first discoverer. 

 The seventh, seen by her on November 7, 1795, was 

 specially worthy of this name, but is now known as 

 Encke's Comet. Her value as an assistant to her 

 brother, besides her own personal merit as a woman 

 of science, got for her a pension of 50 from the Civil 

 List, granted to the King by Parliament. It was 

 sufficient for the modest wants of a woman who not 

 only handled a telescope with the dexterity of a 

 practised observer, but, when sixty years of age, spent 

 some of the last days of her stay at Slough " in paint- 

 ing and papering the rooms she was to occupy in a 

 small house of her brother's, attached to the Crown 

 Inn, to which she removed." 



Year after year, from 1780 to 1812, the active mind 

 and the prolific pen of William Herschel enriched the 

 Proceedings of the Royal Society with one or more 

 papers, which astonished the world of science and 

 attracted the attention of mankind. The years 1813, 

 1816 were blanks, but 1814, 1815, 1817, and 1818 

 showed no feebling of hand or eye, although for years 

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