Mr. Aubert’s letter, as well as that with which you favoured me, both arrived safe. The evening was fine on Thursday, but Mr. Aubert was prevented from going to Loam Pit Hill, and I have no opportunity of making astronomical observations here, so that I believe the comet has not yet been seen by anyone in England but yourself. Yesterday the visitation of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich was held, where most of the principal astronomers in and near London attended, which afforded an opportunity of spreading the news of your discovery, and I doubt not but many of them will verify it the next clear night. I also mentioned it in a letter to Paris, and in another I had occasion to write to Munich, in Germany. If the weather should be favourable on Sunday evening, it is not impossible that Sir Joseph Banks and some friends from his house may wait upon you to beg the favour of viewing this phenomenon through your telescope. Accept my best thanks for your obliging attention in communicating to me the news, and believe me to be, with great esteem, Your obedient, humble servant, C. BLAGDEN. ALEX. AUBERT, ESQ., TO MISS HERSCHEL. LONDON, _7th August, 1786_. DEAR MISS HERSCHEL,— I am sure you have a better opinion of me than to think I have been ungrateful for your very, very kind letter of the 2nd August. You will have judged I wished to give you some account of your comet before I answered it. I wish you joy, most sincerely, on the discovery. I am more pleased than you can well conceive that _you_ have made it, and I think I see your _wonderfully clever_ and _wonderfully amiable_ brother, upon the news of it, shed a tear of joy. You have immortalized your name, and you deserve such a reward from the Being who has ordered all these things to move as we find them, for your assiduity in the business of astronomy, and for your love for so celebrated and so deserving a brother. I received your very kind letter about the comet on the 3rd, but have not been able to observe it till Saturday, the 5th, owing to cloudy weather. I found it immediately by your directions; it is very curious, and in every respect as you describe it. I have compared it to a fixed star, on Saturday night and Sunday night.... * * * * * You see it travels very fast—at the rate of 2° 10ʹ per day—and moves but little in N. P. D. These observations were made with an equatorial micrometer of Mr. Smeaton’s construction, which your brother must recollect to have seen at Loam Pit Hill. I need not tell you that meridian observations with my transit instrument and mural quadrant must have been much more accurate. I give you a little figure of its appearance last night and the preceding night upon the scale of Flamsteed’s Atlas Cœlestis [here follows the sketch-figure].