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.
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