February 7.—­Had letters yesterday from Lady Davy and Lady Louisa Stuart,[152] two very different persons.  Lady Davy, daughter and co-heiress of a wealthy Antigua merchant, has been known to me all my life.  Her father was a relation of ours of a Scotch calculation.  He was of a good family, Kerr of Bloodielaws, but decayed.  Miss Jane Kerr married first Mr. Apreece, son of a Welsh Baronet.  The match was not happy.  I had lost all acquaintance with her for a long time, when about twenty years ago we renewed it in London.  She was then a widow, gay, clever, and most actively ambitious to play a distinguished part in London society.  Her fortune, though handsome and easy, was not large enough to make way by dint of showy entertainments, and so forth.  So she took the blue line, and by great tact and management actually established herself as a leader of literary fashion.  Soon after, she visited Edinburgh for a season or two, and studied the Northern Lights.  One of the best of them, poor Jack Playfair,[153] was disposed “to shoot madly from his sphere,"[154] and, I believe, asked her, but he was a little too old.  She found a fitter husband in every respect in Sir Humphry Davy, to whom she gave a handsome fortune, and whose splendid talents and situation as President of the Royal Society gave her naturally a distinguished place in the literary society of the Metropolis.  Now this is a very curious instance of an active-minded woman forcing her way to the point from which she seemed furthest excluded.  For, though clever and even witty, she had no peculiar accomplishment, and certainly no good taste either for science or letters naturally.  I was once in the Hebrides with her, and I admired to observe how amidst sea-sickness, fatigue, some danger, and a good deal of indifference as to what she saw, she gallantly maintained her determination to see everything.[155] It marked her strength of character, and she joined to it much tact, and always addressed people on the right side.  So she stands high, and deservedly so, for to these active qualities, more French I think than English, and partaking of the Creole vivacity and suppleness of character, she adds, I believe, honourable principles and an excellent heart.  As a lion-catcher, I could pit her against the world.  She flung her lasso (see Hall’s South America) over Byron himself.  But then, poor soul, she is not happy.  She has a temper, and Davy has a temper, and these tempers are not one temper, but two tempers, and they quarrel like cat and dog, which may be good for stirring up the stagnation of domestic life, but they let the world see it, and that is not so well.  Now in all this I may be thought a little harsh on my friend, but it is between my Gurnal and me, and, moreover, I would cry heartily if anything were to ail my little cousin, though she be addicted to rule the Cerulean atmosphere.[156] Then I suspect the cares of this as well as other empires overbalance its pleasures.