Thibodaux minerva. [volume] (Thibodaux, La.) 18??-1858, 1853-07-30
The Mother of Lamartine.

Lamartine, in his Confidential Disclosures
or Memories of his Youth, has reared q
splendid and enduring monument to the
| memory of his mother His eloquent ant
profoundly affeciiouate a ndtender deiinea
tons of her love and pety must elevate him
in the esteem of our lady readers, as well a:
the mother whose praise he records with SC
much power and fervency. We quote few
passages only from his splendid portraiture
The whole of her soul was an immense
tender, and conso,ing sense of the Infinite
1t was too vast for the wretched and petty
ambitions ofthis world. She was passing
through it, not inhabiiing it, That sense
of the Infinite i'll all, and particularly in
love, had converted itself for her into per.
petual invocation and aspiration to the One
who was Its source. that is to say, to God
1t may be said that she lived in God as
much as ii is given to any human being to
live in Him. There was not a single side
of her soul that was not constantly turned
towards Him, that was not made transpa-
rent, bright, and warm by that radiant
beam from above which flows directly from
God upon our thoughts, and which pene-
trates into us through the darkness of our
the crystal of our closed dwellings. The
result of this for her was piety which was
never overcast. She was not devotee;
she had none of that stupid dread of God,
none Of that pueriiity, Of that subsection Of
the soul, none of that EQUALIZATION Of the
mind, which make up the sum of devotion
with great many women, and are in them
only an infancy prolonged through life. or a
morose, peevsh, and jealous old age, which
revenges itself on sacred passion for the
profane passions which they can no longer
enjoy. { --.- 49,
Her piety was the part of herself which
she most ardentty wished TO communicate
to us. To make US creatures Of God in
spirit and in reality, was her most maternal
thought. Even in this. she succeeded
without any system, and without any effort,
and with that marvellous skill which nature
imparts, and which no artifice can equal.
Her piety. which flowed from every breath
she drew, from every one of her actions,
from every one of her GESTURES, enyeloped US
here below so to speak, in heavenly at
mosphere. We thought that God was be-
hind her, and that we would hear and see
Him as she herself seemed to hear, and see,
and converse with at each hour Of the day
God for Us was as one of Us He was born
in us, with our earliest and our most undefn-
able feelings. We remembered no time
when we knew Him not; there was no FIRST
day on which his name had been mentioned
to US. At morn, at eve, before and after
our meals, we were taught to make shorl
prayers. Our mothers knees were for a
long time our domestic altar On those oc.
casions her beamipg countenance was al.
ways yelled with a respectful and somewhat
solemn thonghtfulness, which impressed on
our minds the solemnity of the act which
we were performing. When she had prayed
with us and over Us, her beautiful face be-
came more gentle and more tender thar
ever. We felt thar she had co1nmunec
with her strength and her joy, that she
might have more Of both to pour upon ou7
heads. e.. .szt-7 80 -. .==s