"----a sleeping lake, That takes the hue of cloud and sky, And only feels its surface break As birds of passage wander by, That dip their wing and upward soar, Leaving it quiet as before." Before the mind's eye of such a man, the beauties of nature do not glide away like the figures of a painted panorama, serving only to amuse, charming the eye for a moment with grace of form and beauty of manner, and then passing away like an idle dream, the "baseless fabric of a vision." In the true man, the child of God, the inner, the spiritual sense is awakened in sympathy with the material organs of vision. For him each lineament of nature is a revelation, each feature a symbol. The flowers are to him, as some one has beautifully remarked, the "alphabet of angels." We have labored somewhat in these pages, even at the risk of repetition, to inculcate the idea that Mr. Ballou was one of these students of nature; and this was the case in a most eminent degree: the teachings that he received at her feet in youth he garnered up in his heart, to be repeated, to be illustrated, and illumined with new light from the brightness of his intellect, to be poured forth again to thousands who required so eloquent an interpreter. He had learned a lesson he could never forget, from the beautiful creations of God, of his fatherly affection. The fierce midnight storm, with its thunder-peals and lightning-flashes, had no terror for him; he knew better than to interpret it as a manifestation of the wrath and vengeful fury of the Deity; for he knew that it was to be followed by a purer and healthier atmosphere, by the glowing bow of promise, and by brighter smiles from the unshadowed sun. In none of the varied phenomena of nature did he behold the God of wrath, the God of vengeance, the pitiless Deity of the dark theology, whose horrors he was destined to dissipate and overcome. Far from this. He deduced from every phase of nature the great truth of the all-prevailing and inexhaustible love of the Almighty for the children of his creation. Thus, by the simple symbols and tokens he had discovered, strewn like flowers along the pathway of life, he sought to awaken the torpid sense of those "who, having eyes, saw not, and having ears, heard not," the wonders of the glad tidings the angel-messengers of the Deity were commissioned to communicate to man.