In 1882, however, two years and a half after the appearance of the comet of 1880, another comet came up from the south, which followed in the sun’s neighborhood almost the same course as the comets of 1668, 1843, and 1880.  The path it followed was not quite so close to those followed by the other three as these had been to each other, but yet was far too close to indicate possibly a mere casual resemblance; on the contrary, the resemblance in regard to shape, slope, and those peculiarities which render this family of comets unique in the cometary system, was of the closest and most striking kind.

Many will remember the startling ideas which were suggested, by Professor Piazzi Smyth respecting the portentous significance of the comet of 1882.  He regarded it as confirming the great pyramid’s teaching (according to the views of orthodox pyramidalists) respecting the approaching end of the Christian dispensation.  It was seen under very remarkable circumstances, blazing close by the sun, within a fortnight or three weeks of the precise date which had been announced as marking that critical epoch in the history of the earth.

Moreover, even viewing the matter from a scientific standpoint, Professor Smyth (who, outside his pyramidal paradoxes, is an astronomer of well deserved repute) could recognize sufficient reason for regarding the comet as portentous.

Many others, indeed, both in America and in Europe, shared his opinion in this respect.  A very slight retardation of the course of the comet of 1880, during its passage close by the surface of the sun, would have sufficed to alter its period of revolution from the thirty-seven years assigned on the supposition of its identity with the comet of 1843 to the two and a half years indicated by its apparent return in 1882, and if this had occurred in 1880, a similar interruption in 1832 would have caused its return in less than two and a half years.

Thus, circling in an ever narrowing (or rather shortening) orbit, it would presently, within a quarter of a century or so perhaps, have become so far entangled among the atmospheric matter around the sun that it would have been unable to resist absolute absorption.  What the consequences to the solar system might have been, none ventured to suggest.  Newton had expressed his belief that the effects of such absorption would be disastrous, but the physicists of the nineteenth century, better acquainted with the laws associating heat and motion, were not so despondent.  Only Professor Smyth seems to have felt assured (not being despondent, but confident) that the comet portended, in a very decisive way, the beginning of the end.