idly we "profane the sacred time"
By silly prose, light jest, and lighter rhyme.[150]

I have a song to write, too, and I am not thinking of it. I trust it
will come upon me at once--a sort of catch it should be.[151] I walked
out, feeling a little overwrought. Saw Constable and turned over
Clarendon. Cadell not yet out of hiding. This is simple work. Obliged to
borrow L240, to be refunded in spring, from John Gibson, to pay my
nephew's outfit and passage to Bombay. I wish I could have got this
money otherwise, but I must not let the orphan boy, and such a clever
fellow, miscarry through my fault. His education, etc., has been at my
expense ever since he came from America.

_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 g