To know this incomparable woman we must hear her.  “Consider your father’s precepts as oracles of wisdom; they are the result of the experience he has collected, not only of life, but of that art which he has acquired simply by his own industry.”  She would not have her son suffer his strong affection to herself to absorb all other sentiments.  “Had you remained at home, and been habituated under your mother’s auspices to employments merely domestic, what advantage would you have acquired?  I own we should have passed some delightful winter evenings together; but your love for the arts, and my ambition to see my sons as much distinguished for their talents as their virtues, would have been a constant source of regret at your passing your time in a manner so little worthy of you.”

How profound is her observation on the strong but confined attachments of a youth of genius!  “I have frequently remarked, with some regret, the excessive attachment you indulge towards those who see and feel as you do yourself, and the total neglect with which you seem to treat every one else.  I should reproach a man with such a fault who was destined to pass his life in a small and unvarying circle; but in an artist, who has a great object in view, and whose country is the whole world, this disposition seems to be likely to produce a great number of inconveniences.  Alas! my son, the life you have hitherto led in your father’s house has been in fact a pastoral life, and not such a one as was necessary for the education of a man whose destiny summons him to the world.”

And when her son, after meditating on some of the most glorious productions of art, felt himself, as he says, “disheartened and cast down at the unattainable superiority of the artist, and that it was only by reflecting on the immense labour and continued efforts which such masterpieces must have required, that I regained my courage and my ardour,” she observes, “This passage, my dear son, is to me as precious as gold, and I send it to you again, because I wish you to impress it strongly on your mind.  The remembrance of this may also be a useful preservative from too great confidence in your abilities, to which a warm imagination may sometimes be liable, or from the despondence you might occasionally feel from the contemplation of grand originals.  Continue, therefore, my dear son, to form a sound judgment and a pure taste from your own observations:  your mind, while yet young and flexible, may receive whatever impressions you wish.  Be careful that your abilities do not inspire in you too much confidence, lest it should happen to you as it has to many others, that they have never possessed any greater merit than that of having good abilities.”