The influence of nature in the formation of character has been much insisted on by metaphysicians, and not without ample reason. The qualities of men are found to assimilate very closely to the characteristics of the country they inhabit. Thus the mountaineer is bold, rugged, hardy, independent, and fond of liberty. In Europe, surrounded on every hand by despotism, Alpine Switzerland has preserved its political independence for ages. But especially is the power of natural scenery witnessed in the nurture of deep religious feeling. "The groves were God's first temples." The first prayer uttered by man was breathed to his Creator in a garden, among the olive trees of Eden. The disciples of our Saviour listened to their Lord in the deep wilderness, in the awful solitude of rugged mountains. In the heart of mighty forests and by the shores of ever-rushing rivers, the littleness of man, contrasting with the grandeur of creation, speaks to his awakened soul of the omnipotence and goodness of God. Where men are banded together in great cities, in the midst of splendors and triumphs of art, they are apt to feel a pride and self-reliance which abandon them in the face of nature. Apart from the frequent spectacle of man's handiwork, the dweller in the country learns how all human skill is impotent to imitate the smallest feature in the great work of creation; to create the lightest blade of grass that bends in the summer breeze; to fabricate even the minutest grain of sand that sparkles by the river shore. Then, as he lifts his eyes from earth to heaven, and beholds at night the starry host above him wheeling unerringly upon their appointed courses, his mind cannot but acknowledge the existence of God, and the immeasurable greatness of his attributes. It will be seen, in the course of this narrative, that the influences we have alluded to must have produced a powerful effect upon a mind constituted like that of the subject of this biography. In relation to the genealogy of the family, we have it in detail as far back, on the paternal side, as his great-great-grandfather, Matteaurian Ballou,--so the name was spelled by him,--who came from England, though a Frenchman by descent, about the year 1640. He occupied a portion of a royal grant of land, about that time purchased from the Narraganset tribe of Indians, by the agent of the crown. This tract was situated in the present State of Rhode Island, where descendants of the family still reside. This Matteaurian Ballou's oldest son was named John, whose second son was named Matteaurian, who, also, had a son named Matteaurian, who in turn had eleven children,--six sons and five daughters. The youngest of the family was named Hosea, the subject of these memoirs.