Lady Lyell was a woman of rare excellence. "Strength and sweetness were hers, both in no common degree. The daughter of Leonard Horner, and the niece of Francis Horner, her own excellent understanding had been carefully trained, and she had that general knowledge and those intellectual tastes which we expect to find in an educated Englishwoman; and from her childhood she had breathed the refining air of taste, knowledge, and goodness. Her marriage ... gave a scientific turn to her thoughts and studies, and she became to her husband, not merely the truest of friends and the most affectionate and sympathetic of companions, but a very efficient helper. She was frank, generous, and true; her moral instincts were high and pure; she was faithful and firm in friendship; she was fearless in the expression of opinion without being aggressive; and she had that force of character and quiet energy of temperament that gave her the power to do all that she had resolved to do.... She had more than a common share of personal beauty; but had she not been beautiful she would have been lovely, such was the charm of her manners, which were the natural expression of warmth and tenderness of heart, of quick sympathies, and of a tact as delicate as a blind man's touch."[149] He was not, however, left to bear in solitude the burden of darkening sight and of a desolated home. His eldest sister, Miss Lyell, came from Kinnordy to take care of his house and watch over him in these last years with an affectionate devotion; and in her company and that of Professor Hughes he even carried out the plan, which had been already in contemplation, of once more going on to the Continent and of visiting Professor Heer, at Zürich.