In the high sense, no man is great save he that is a large continent of this absolute humanity. The common nature of man it is; yet those are ever, and in the happiest sense, uncommon men, in whom it is liberally present.

But every man, besides the nature which constitutes him man, has, so to speak, another nature, which constitutes him a particular individual. He is not only like all others of his kind, but, at the same time, unlike all others. By physical and mental feature he is distinguished, insulated; he is endowed with a quality so purely in contrast with the common nature of man, that in virtue of it he can be singled out from hundreds of millions, from all the myriads of his race. So far, now, as one is representative of absolute humanity, he is a Person; so far as, by an element peculiar to himself, he is contrasted with absolute humanity, he is an Individual. And having duly chanted our Credo concerning man's pure and public nature, let us now inquire respecting this dividing element of Individuality,—which, with all the force it has, strives to cut off communication, to destroy unity, and to make of humanity a chaos or dust of biped atoms.

Not for a moment must we make this surface nature of equal estimation with the other. It is secondary, very secondary, to the pure substance of man. The Person first in order of importance; the Individual next,—

"Proximus huic, longo sed proximus intervallo,"—

"next with an exceeding wide remove."

Take from Epaminondas or Luther all that makes him man, and the rest will not be worth selling to the Jews. Individuality is an accompaniment, an accessory, a red line on the map, a fence about the field, a copyright on the book. It is like the particular flavors of fruits,—of no account but in relation to their saccharine, acid, and other staple elements. It must therefore keep its place, or become an impertinence. If it grow forward, officious, and begin to push in between the pure nature and its divine ends, at once it is a meddling Peter, for whom there is no due greeting but "Get thee behind me, Satan." If the fruit have a special flavor of such ambitious pungency that the sweets and acids cannot appear through it, be sure that to come at this fruit no young Wilhelm Meister will purloin keys. If one be so much an Individual that he wellnigh ceases to be a Man, we shall not admire him. It is the same in mental as in physical feature. Let there, by all means, be slight divergence from the common type; but by all means let it be no more than a slight divergence. Too much is monstrous: even a very slight excess is what we call ugliness. Gladly I perceive in my neighbor's face, voice, gait, manner, a certain charm of peculiarity; but if in any the peculiarity be so great as to suggest a doubt whether he be not some other creature than man, may he not be neighbor of mine!

A little of this surface nature suffices; yet that little cannot be spared. Its first office is to guard frontiers. We must not lie quite open to the inspection or invasion of others: yet, were there no medium of unlikeness interposed between one and another, privacy would be impossible, and one's own bosom would not be sacred to himself. But Nature has secured us against these profanations; and as we have locks to our doors, curtains to our windows, and, upon occasion, a passport system on our borders, so has she cast around each spirit this veil to guard it from intruding eyes, this barrier to keep away the feet of strangers. Homer represents the divinities as coming invisibly to admonish their favored heroes; but Nature was beforehand with the poet, and every one of us is, in like manner, a celestial nature walking concealed. Who sees you, when you walk the street? Who would walk the street, did be not feel himself fortressed in a privacy that no foreign eyes can enter? But for this, no cities would be built. Society, therefore, would be impossible, save for this element, which seems to hinder society. Each of us, wrapt in his opaque individuality, like Apollo or Athene in a blue mist, remains hidden, if he will; and therefore do men dare to come together.

But this superficial element, while securing privacy to the pure nature, also aids it to expression. It emphasizes the outlines of Personality by gentle contrast. It is like the shadow in the landscape, without which all the sunbeams of heaven could not reveal with precision a single object. Assured lovers resort to happy banter and light oppositions, to give themselves a sweeter sense of unity of heart. The child, with a cunning which only Nature has taught, will sometimes put a little honey of refusal into its kisses before giving them; the maiden adds to her virgin blooms the further attraction of virgin coyness and reserve; the civilizing dinner-table would lose all its dignity in losing its delays; and so everywhere, delicate denial, withholding reserve have an inverse force, and add a charm of emphasis to gift, assent, attraction, and sympathy. How is the word Immortality emphasized to our hearts by the perpetual spectacle of death! The joy and suggestion of it could, indeed, never visit us, had not this momentary loud denial been uttered in our ears. Such, therefore, as have learned to interpret these oppositions in Nature, hear in the jarring note of Death only a jubilant proclamation of life eternal; while all are thus taught the longing for immortality, though only by their fear of the contrary. And so is the pure universal nature of man affirmed by these provocations of contrast and insulation on the surface. We feel the personality far more, and far more sweetly, for its being thus divided from our own. From behind this veil the pure nature comes to us with a kind of surprise, as out of another heaven. The joy of truth and delight of beauty are born anew for us from each pair of chanting lips and beholding eyes; and each new soul that comes promises another gift of the universe. Whoever, in any time or under any sky, sees the worth and wonder of existence, sees it for me; whatever language he speak, whatever star he inhabit, we shall one day meet, and through the confession of his heart all my ancient possessions will become a new gain; he shall make for me a natal day of creation, showing the producing breath, as it goes forth from the lips of God, and spreads into the blue purity of sky, or rounds into the luminance of suns; the hills and their pines, the vales and their blooms, and heroic men and beauteous women, all that I have loved or reverenced, shall come again, appearing and trooping out of skies never visible before. Because of these dividing lines between souls, each new soul is to all the others a possible factor of heaven.

Such uses does individuality subserve. Yet it is capable of these ministries only as it does indeed minister. All its uses are lost with the loss of its humility and subordinance. It is the porter at the gate, furthering the access of lawful, and forbidding the intrusion of unlawful visitors to the mansion; who becomes worse than useless, if in surly excess of zeal he bar the gate against all, or if in the excess of self-importance he receive for himself what is meant for his master, and turn visitors aside into the porter's lodge. Beautiful is virgin reserve, and true it is that delicate half-denial reinforces attraction; yet the maiden who carries only No upon her tongue, and only refusal in her ways, shall never wake before dawn on the day of espousal, nor blush beneath her bridal veil, like Morning behind her clouds. This surface element, we must remember, is not income and resource, but an item of needful, and, so far as needful, graceful and economical expenditure. Excess of it is wasteful, by causing Life to pay for that which he does not need, by increase of social fiction, and by obstruction of social flow with the fructifications which this brings, not to be spared by any mortal. Nay, by extreme excess, it may so cut off and sequester a man, that no word or aspect of another soul can reach him; he shall see in mankind only himself, he shall hear in the voices of others only his own echoes. Many and many a man is there, so housed in his individuality, that it goes, like an impenetrable wall, over eye and ear; and even in the tramp of the centuries he can find hint of nothing save the sound of his own feet. It is a frequent tragedy,—but profound as frequent.

One great task, indeed the great task of good-breeding is, accordingly, to induce in this element a delicacy, a translucency, which, without robbing any action or sentiment of the hue it imparts, shall still allow the pure human quality perfectly and perpetually to shine through. The world has always been charmed with fine manners; and why should it not? For what are fine manners but this: to carry your soul on your lip, in your eye, in the palm of your hand, and yet to stand not naked, but clothed upon by your individual quality,—visible, yet inscrutable,—given to the hearts of others, yet contained in your own bosom,—nobly and humanly open, yet duly reticent and secured from invasion? Polished manners often disappoint us; good manners never.

The former may be taken on by indigent souls: the latter imply a noble and opulent nature. And wait you not for death, according to the counsel of Solon, to be named happy, if you are permitted fellowship with a man of rich mind, whose individual savor you always finely perceive, and never more than finely,—who yields you the perpetual sense of community, and never of confusion, with your own spirit. The happiness is all the greater, if the fellowship be accorded by a mind eminently superior to one's own; for he, while yet more removed, comes yet nearer, seeming to be that which our own soul may become in some future life, and so yielding us the sense of our own being more deeply and powerfully than it is given by the consciousness in our own bosom. And going forward to the supreme point of this felicity, we may note that the worshipper, in the ecstasy of his adoration, feels the Highest to be also Nearest,—more remote than the borders of space and fringes of heaven,—more intimate with his own being than the air he breathes or the thought be thinks; and of this double sense is the rapture of his adoration, and the joy indeed of every angel, born.

Divineness appertains to the absolute nature of man; piquancy and charm to that which serves and modifies this. Infinitude and immortality are of the one; the strictest finiteness belongs to the other. In the first you can never be too deep and rich; in the second never too delicate and measured. Yet you will easily find a man in whom the latter so abounds as not only to shut him out from others, but to absorb all the vital resource generated in his own bosom, leaving to the pure personality nothing. The finite nature fares sumptuously every day; the other is a heavenly Lazarus sitting at the gate.

Of such individuals there are many classes; and the majority of eccentric men constitute one class. If a man have very peculiar ways, we readily attribute to him a certain depth and force, and think that the polished citizen wants character in comparison. Probably it is not so. Singularity may be as shallow as the shallowest conformity. There are numbers of such from whom if you deduct the eccentricity, it is like subtracting red from vermilion or six from half a dozen. They are grimaces of humanity,—no more. In particular, I make occasion to say, that those oddities, whose chief characteristic it is to slink away from the habitations of men, and claim companionship with musk-rats, are, despite Mr. Thoreau's pleasant patronage of them, no whit more manly or profound than the average citizen, who loves streets and parlors, and does not endure estrangement from the Post-Office. Mice lurk in holes and corners; could the cat speak, she would say that they have a genius only for lurking in holes. Bees and ants are, to say the least, quite as witty as beetles, proverbially blind; yet they build insect cities, and are as invincibly social and city-loving as Socrates himself.

Aside, however, from special eccentricity, there are men, like the Earl of Essex, Bacon's soi-disant friend, who possess a certain emphatic and imposing individuality, which, while commonly assumed to indicate character and force, is really but the succedaneum for these. They are like oysters, with extreme stress of shell, and only a blind, soft, acephalous body within. These are commonly great men so long as little men will serve; and are something less than little ever after. As an instance of this, I should select the late chief magistrate of this nation. His whole ability lay in putting a most imposing countenance upon commonplaces. He made a mere air seem solid as rock. Owing to this possibility of presenting all force on the outside, and so creating a false impression of resource, all great social emergencies are followed by a speedy breaking down of men to whom was generally attributed an able spirit; while others of less outward mark, and for this reason hitherto unnoticed, come forward, and prove to be indeed the large vessels of manhood accorded to that generation.

Our tendency to assume individual mark as the measure of personality is flattered by many of the books we read. It is, of course, easier to depict character, when it is accompanied by some striking individual hue; and therefore in romances and novels this is conferred upon all the forcible characters, merely to favor the author's hand: as microscopists feed minute creatures with colored food to make their circulations visible. It is only the great master who can represent a powerful personality in the purest state, that is, with the maximum of character and the minimum of individual distinction; while small artists, with a feeble hold upon character, habitually resort to extreme quaintnesses and singularities of circumstance, in order to confer upon their weak portraitures some vigor of outline. It takes a Giotto to draw readily a nearly perfect O; but a nearly perfect triangle any one can draw. Shakspeare is able to delineate a Gentleman,—one, that is, who, while nobly and profoundly a man, is so delicately individualized, that the impression of him, however vigorous and commanding, cannot be harsh: Shakspeare is equal to this task, but even so very able a painter as Fielding is not. His Squire Western and Parson Adams are exquisite, his Allworthy is vapid: deny him strong pigments of individualism, and he is unable to portray strong character. Scott, among British novelists, is, perhaps, in this respect most Shakspearian, though the Colonel Esmond of Thackeray is not to be forgotten; but even Scott's Dandie Dinmonts, or gentlemen in the rough, sparkle better than his polished diamonds. Yet in this respect the Waverley Novels are singularly and admirably healthful, comparing to infinite advantage with the rank and file of novels, wherein the "characters" are but bundles of quaintnesses, and the action is impossible.

Written history has somewhat of the same infirmity with fictitious literature, though not always by the fault of the historian. Far too little can it tell us respecting those of whom we desire to know much; while, on the other hand, it is often extremely liberal of information concerning those of whom we desire to know nothing. The greatest of men approach a pure personality, a pure representation of man's imperishable nature; individual peculiarity they far less abound in; and what they do possess is held in transparent solution by their manhood, as a certain amount of vapor is always held by the air. The higher its temperature, the more moisture can the atmosphere thus absorb, exhibiting it not as cloud, but only as immortal azure of sky: and so the greater intensity there is of the pure quality of man, the more of individual peculiarity can it master and transform into a simple heavenliness of beauty, of which the world finds few words to say. Men, in general, have, perhaps, no more genius than novelists in general,—though it seems a hard speech to make,—and while profoundly impressed by any manifestation of the pure genius of man, can observe and relate only peculiarities and exceptional traits. Incongruities are noted; congruities are only felt. If a two-headed calf be born, the newspapers hasten to tell of it; but brave boys and beautiful girls by thousands grow to fulness of stature without mention. We know so little of Homer and Shakspeare partly because they were Homer and Shakspeare. Smaller men might afford more plentiful materials for biography, because their action and character would be more clouded with individualism. The biography of a supreme poet is the history of his kind. He transmits himself by pure vital impression. His remembrance is committed, not to any separable faculty, but to a memory identical with the total being of men. If you would learn his story, listen to the sprites that ride on crimson steeds along the arterial highways, singing of man's destiny as they go.



THE GERMAN BURNS.

The extreme southwestern corner of Germany is an irregular right-angle, formed by the course of the Rhine. Within this angle and an hypothenuse drawn from the Lake of Constance to Carlsruhe lies a wild mountain-region—a lateral offshoot from the central chain which extends through Europe from west to east—known to all readers of robber-romances as the Black Forest. It is a cold, undulating upland, intersected with deep valleys which descend to the plains of the Rhine and the Danube, and covered with great tracts of fir-forest. Here and there a peak rises high above the general level, the Feldberg attaining a height of five thousand feet. The aspect of this region is stern and gloomy: the fir-woods appear darker than elsewhere; the frequent little lakes are as inky in hue as the pools of the High Alps; and the meadows of living emerald give but a partial brightness to the scenery. Here, however, the solitary traveller may adventure without fear. Robbers and robber-castles have long since passed away, and the people, rough and uncouth as they may at first seem, are as kindly-hearted as they are honest. Among them was born—and in their incomprehensible dialect wrote—Hebel, the German Burns.

We dislike the practice of using the name of one author as the characteristic designation of another. It is, at best, the sign of an imperfect fame, implying rather the imitation of a scholar than the independent position of a master. We can, nevertheless, in no other way indicate in advance the place which the subject of our sketch occupies in the literature of Germany. A contemporary of Burns, and ignorant of the English language, there is no evidence that he had ever even heard of the former; but Burns, being the first truly great poet who succeeded in making classic a local dialect, thereby constituted himself an illustrious standard, by which his successors in the same path must be measured. Thus, Bellman and Beranger have been inappropriately invested with his mantle, from the one fact of their being song-writers of a democratic stamp. The Gascon, Jasmin, better deserves the title; and Longfellow, in translating his "Blind Girl of Castel-Cuille," says,—

"Only the lowland tongue of Scotland might Rehearse this little tragedy aright":—

a conviction which we have frequently shared, in translating our German author.

It is a matter of surprise to us, that, while Jasmin's poems have gone far beyond the bounds of France, the name of John Peter Hebel—who possesses more legitimate claims to the peculiar distinction which Burns achieved—is not only unknown outside of Germany, but not even familiarly known to the Germans themselves. The most probable explanation is, that the Alemannic dialect, in which he wrote, is spoken only by the inhabitants of the Black Forest and a portion of Suabia, and cannot be understood, without a glossary, by the great body of the North-Germans. The same cause would operate, with greater force, in preventing a translation into foreign languages. It is, in fact, only within the last twenty years that the Germans have become acquainted with Burns,—chiefly through the admirable translations of the poet Freiligrath.

To Hebel belongs the merit of having bent one of the harshest of German dialects to the uses of poetry. We doubt whether the lyre of Apollo was ever fashioned from a wood of rougher grain. Broad, crabbed, guttural, and unpleasant to the ear which is not thoroughly accustomed to its sound, the Alemannic patois was, in truth, a most unpromising material. The stranger, even though he were a good German scholar, would never suspect the racy humor, the naive, childlike fancy, and the pure human tenderness of expression which a little culture has brought to bloom on such a soil. The contractions, elisions, and corruptions which German words undergo, with the multitude of terms in common use derived from the Gothic, Greek, Latin, and Italian, give it almost the character of a different language. It was Hebel's mother-tongue, and his poetic faculty always returned to its use with a fresh delight which insured success. His German poems are inferior in all respects.

Let us first glance at the poet's life,—a life uneventful, perhaps, yet interesting from the course of its development. He was born in Basle, in May, 1760, in the house of Major Iselin, where both his father and mother were at service. The former, a weaver by trade, afterwards became a soldier, and accompanied the Major to Flanders, France, and Corsica. He had picked up a good deal of stray knowledge on his campaigns, and had a strong natural taste for poetry. The qualities of the son were inherited from him rather than from the mother, of whom we know nothing more than that she was a steady, industrious person. The parents lived during the winter in the little village of Hausen, in the Black Forest, but with the approach of spring returned to Basle for their summer service in Major Iselin's house.

The boy was but a year old when his father died, and the discipline of such a restless spirit as he exhibited in early childhood seems to have been a task almost beyond the poor widow's powers. An incorrigible spirit of mischief possessed him. He was an arrant scape-grace, plundering cupboards, gardens, and orchards, lifting the gates of mill-races by night, and playing a thousand other practical and not always innocent jokes. Neither counsel nor punishment availed, and the entire weight of his good qualities, as a counterbalance, barely sufficed to prevent him from losing the patrons whom his bright, eager, inquisitive mind attracted. Something of this was undoubtedly congenital, and there are indications that the strong natural impulse, held in check only by a powerful will and a watchful conscience, was the torment of his life. In his later years, when he filled the posts of Ecclesiastical Counsellor and Professor in the Gymnasium at Carlsruhe, the phrenologist Gall, in a scientific seance, made an examination of his head. "A most remarkable development of"——, said Gall, abruptly breaking off, nor could he be induced to complete the sentence. Hebel, however, frankly exclaimed,—"You certainly mean the thievish propensity. I know I have it by nature, for I continually feel its suggestions." What a picture is presented by this confession! A pure, honest, and honorable life, won by a battle with evil desires, which, commencing with birth, ceased their assaults only at the brink of the grave! A daily struggle, and a daily victory!

Hebel lost his mother in his thirteenth year, but was fortunate in possessing generous patrons, who contributed enough to the slender means he inherited to enable him to enter the Gymnasium at Carlsruhe. Leaving this institution with the reputation of a good classical scholar, he entered the University of Erlangen as a student of theology. Here his jovial, reckless temperament, finding a congenial atmosphere, so got the upperhand that he barely succeeded in passing the necessary examination, in 1780. At the end of two years, during which time he supported himself as a private tutor, he was ordained, and received a meagre situation as teacher in the Academy at Loerrach, with a salary of one hundred and forty dollars a year! Laboring patiently in this humble position for eight years, he was at last rewarded by being transferred to the Gymnasium at Carlsruhe, with the rank of Sub-Deacon. Hither, the Markgraf Frederick of Baden, attracted by the warmth, simplicity, and genial humor of the man, came habitually to listen to his sermons. He found himself, without seeking it, in the path of promotion, and his life thenceforth was a series of sure and moderate successes. His expectations, indeed, were so humble that they were always exceeded by his rewards. When Baden became a Grand Duchy, with a constitutional form of government, it required much persuasion to induce him to accept the rank of Prelate, with a seat in the Upper House. His friends were disappointed, that, with his readiness and fluent power of speech, he took so little part in the legislative proceedings. To one who reproached him for this timidity he naively wrote,—"Oh, you have a right to talk: you are the son of Pastor N. in X. Before you were twelve years old, you heard yourself called Mr. Gottlieb; and when you went with your father down the street, and the judge or a notary met you, they took off their hats, you waiting for your father to return the greeting, before you even lifted your cap. But I, as you well know, grew up as the son of a poor widow in Hausen; and when I accompanied my mother to Schopfheim or Basle, and we happened to meet a notary, she commanded, 'Peter, jerk your cap off, there's a gentleman!'—but when the judge or the counsellor appeared, she called out to me, when they were twenty paces off, 'Peter, stand still where you are, and off with your cap quick, the Lord Judge is comin'!' Now you can easily imagine how I feel, when I recall those times,—and I recall them often,—sitting in the Chamber among Barons, Counsellors of State, Ministers, and Generals, with Counts and Princes of the reigning House before me." Hebel may have felt that rank is but the guinea-stamp, but he never would have dared to speak it out with the defiant independence of Burns. Socially, however, he was thoroughly democratic in his tastes; and his chief objection to accepting the dignity of Prelate was the fear that it might restrict his intercourse with humbler friends.

His ambition appears to have been mainly confined to his theological labors, and he never could have dreamed that his after-fame was to rest upon a few poems in a rough mountain-dialect, written to beguile his intense longing for the wild scenery of his early home. After his transfer to Carlsruhe, he remained several years absent from the Black Forest; and the pictures of its dark hills, its secluded valleys, and their rude, warm-hearted, and unsophisticated inhabitants, became more and more fresh and lively in his memory. Distance and absence turned the quaint dialect to music, and out of this mild home-sickness grew the Alemannic poems. A healthy oyster never produces a pearl.

These poems, written in the years 1801 and 1802, were at first circulated in manuscript among the author's friends. He resisted the proposal to collect and publish them, until the prospect of pecuniary advantage decided him to issue an anonymous edition. The success of the experiment was so positive that in the course of five years four editions appeared,—a great deal for those days. Not only among his native Alemanni, and in Baden and Wuertemberg, where the dialect was more easily understood, but from all parts of Germany, from poets and scholars, came messages of praise and appreciation. Jean Paul (Richter) was one of Hebel's first and warmest admirers. "Our Alemannic poet," he wrote, "has life and feeling for everything,—the open heart, the open arms of love; and every star and every flower are human in his sight.... In other, better words,—the evening-glow of a lovely, peaceful soul slumbers upon all the hills he bids arise; for the flowers of poetry he substitutes the flower-goddess Poetry herself; he sets to his lips the Swiss Alp-horn of youthful longing and joy, while pointing with the other hand to the sunset-gleam of the lofty glaciers, and dissolved in prayer, as the sound of the chapel-bells is flung down from the mountains."

Contrast this somewhat confused rhapsody with the clear, precise, yet genial words wherewith Goethe welcomed the new poet. He instantly seized, weighed in the fine balance of his ordered mind, and valued with nice discrimination, those qualities of Hebel's genius which had but stirred the splendid chaos of Richter with an emotion of vague delight. "The author of these poems," says he, in the Jena "Literaturzeitung," (1804,) "is about to achieve a place of his own on the German Parnassus. His talent manifests itself in two opposite directions. On the one hand, he observes with a fresh, cheerful glance those objects of Nature which express their life in positive existence, in growth and in motion, (objects which we are accustomed to call lifeless,) and thereby approaches the field of descriptive poetry; yet he succeeds, by his happy personifications, in lifting his pictures to a loftier plane of Art. On the other hand, he inclines to the didactic and the allegorical; but here, also, the same power of personification comes to his aid, and as, in the one case, he finds a soul for his bodies, so, in the other, he finds a body for his souls. As the ancient poets, and others who have been developed through a plastic sentiment for Art, introduce loftier spirits, related to the gods,—such as nymphs, dryads, and hamadryads,—in the place of rocks, fountains, and trees: so the author transforms these objects into peasants, and countrifies [verbauert] the universe in the most naive, quaint, and genial manner, until the landscape, in which we nevertheless always recognize the human figure, seems to become one with man in the cheerful enchantment exercised upon our fancy."

This is entirely correct, as a poetic characterization. Hebel, however, possesses the additional merit—no slight one, either—of giving faithful expression to the thoughts, emotions, and passions of the simple people among whom his childhood was passed. The hearty native kindness, the tenderness, hidden under a rough exterior, the lively, droll, unformed fancy, the timidity and the boldness of love, the tendency to yield to temptation, and the unfeigned piety of the inhabitants of the Black Forest, are all reproduced in his poems. To say that they teach, more or less directly, a wholesome morality, is but indifferent praise; for morality is the cheap veneering wherewith would-be poets attempt to conceal the lack of the true faculty. We prefer to let our readers judge for themselves concerning this feature of Hebel's poetry.

The Alemannic dialect, we have said, is at first harsh to the ear. It requires, indeed, not a little practice, to perceive its especial beauties; since these consist in certain quaint, playful inflections and elisions, which, like the speech of children, have a fresh, natural, simple charm of their own. The changes of pronunciation, in German words, are curious. K becomes a light guttural ch, and a great number of monosyllabic words—especially those ending in ut and ueh—receive a peculiar twist from the introduction of e or ei: as gut, frueh, which become guet, frueeih. This seems to be a characteristic feature of the South-German dialects, though in none is it so pronounced as in the Alemannic. The change of ist into isch, hast into hesch, ich into i, dich into de, etc., is much more widely spread, among the peasantry, and is readily learned, even by the foreign reader. But a good German scholar would be somewhat puzzled by the consolidation of several abbreviated words into a single one, which occurs in almost every Alemannic sentence: for instance, in woni he would have some difficulty in recognizing wo ich; sagene does not suggest sage ihnen, nor uffeme, auf einem.

These singularities of the dialect render the translation of Hebel's poems into a foreign language a work of great difficulty. In the absence of any English dialect which possesses corresponding features, the peculiar quaintness and raciness which they confer must inevitably be lost. Fresh, wild, and lovely as the Schwarzwald heather, they are equally apt to die in transplanting. How much they lose by being converted into classical German was so evident to us (fancy, "Scots who have with Wallace bled"!) that we at first shrank from the experiment of reproducing them in a language still farther removed from the original. Certainly, classical English would not answer; the individual soul of the poems could never be recognized in such a garb. The tongue of Burns can be spoken only by a born Scot; and our Yankee, which is rather a grotesque English than a dialect, is unfortunately so associated with the coarse and the farcical—Lowell's little poem of "'Zekel's Courtship" being the single exception—that it seems hardly adapted to the simple and tender fancies of Hebel. Like the comedian whose one serious attempt at tragic acting was greeted with roars of laughter, as an admirable burlesque, the reader might, in such a case, persist in seeing fun where sentiment was intended.

In this dilemma, it occurred to us that the common, rude form of the English language, as it is spoken by the uneducated everywhere, without reference to provincial idioms, might possibly be the best medium. It offers, at least, the advantage of simplicity, of a directness of expression which overlooks grammatical rules, of natural pathos, even,—and therefore, so far as these traits go, may reproduce them without detracting seriously from the original. Those other qualities of the poems which spring from the character of the people of whom and for whom they were written must depend, for their recognition, on the sympathetic insight of the reader. We can only promise him the utmost fidelity in the translation, having taken no other liberty than the substitution of common idiomatic phrases, peculiar to our language, for corresponding phrases in the other. The original metre, in every instance, has been strictly adhered to.

The poems, only fifty-nine in number, consist principally of short songs or pastorals, and narratives. The latter are written in hexameter, but by no means classic in form. It is a rough, irregular metre, in which the trochees preponderate over the dactyls: many of the lines, in fact, would not bear a critical scansion. We have not scrupled to imitate this irregularity, as not inconsistent with the plain, ungrammatical speech of the characters introduced, and the homely air of even the most imaginative passages. The opening poem is a charmingly wayward idyl, called "The Meadow," (Die Wiese,) the name of a mountain-stream, which, rising in the Feldberg, the highest peak of the Black Forest, flows past Hausen, Hebel's early home, on its way to the Rhine. An extract from it will illustrate what Jean Paul calls the "hazardous boldness" of Hebel's personifications:—

Beautiful "Meadow," daughter o' Feldberg, I welcome and greet you. Listen: I'm goin' to sing a song, and all in y'r honor, Makin' a music beside ye, follerin' wherever you wander. Born unbeknown in the rocky, hidden heart o' the mountain, Suckled o' clouds and fogs, and weaned by the waters o' heaven, There you slep' like a babblin' baby, a-kep' in the bed-room, Secret, and tenderly cared-for: and eye o' man never saw you,— Never peeked through a key-hole and saw my little girl sleepin' Sound in her chamber o' crystal, rocked in her cradle o' silver. Neither an ear o' man ever listened to hear her a-breathin', No, nor her voice all alone to herself a-laughin' or cryin'. Only the close little spirits that know every passage and entrance, In and out dodgin', they brought ye up and teached ye to toddle, Gev' you a cheerful natur', and larnt you how to be useful: Yes, and their words didn't go into one ear and out at the t'other. Stand on your slippery feet as soon as may be, and use 'em, That you do, as you slyly creep from your chamber o' crystal Out o' doors, barefoot, and squint up to heaven, mischievously smilin'. Oh, but you're pretty, my darlin', y'r eyes have a beautiful sparkle! Isn't it nice, out o' doors? you didn't guess 't was so pleasant? Listen, the leaves is rustlin', and listen, the birdies a-singin'! "Yes," says you, "but I'm goin' furder, and can't stay to hear 'm: Pleasant, truly, 's my way, and more so the furder I travel."

Only see how spry my little one is at her jumpin'! "Ketch me!" she shouts, in her fun,—"if you want me, foller and ketch me!" Every minute she turns and jumps in another direction.

There, you'll fall from the bank! You see, she's done it: I said so. Didn't I say it? And now she wobbles furder and furder, Creepin' along on all-fours, then off on her legs she's a-toddlin',— Slips in the bushes,—"Hunt me!"—and there, on a sudden, she peeks out. Wait, I'm a-comin'! Back o' the trees I hear her a-callin': "Guess where I am!"—she's whims of her own, a plenty, and keeps 'em. But, as you go, you're growin' han'somer, bigger, and stronger. Where the breath o' y'r breathin' falls, the meadows is greener, Fresher o' color, right and left, and the weeds and the grasses Sprout up as juicy as can be, and posies o' loveliest colors Blossom as brightly as wink, and bees come and suck 'em. Water-wagtails come tiltin',—and, look! there's the geese o' the village! All are a-comin' to see you, and all want to give you a welcome; Yes, and you're kind o' heart, and you prattle to all of 'em kindly; "Come, you well-behaved creeturs, eat and drink what I bring you,— I must be off and away: God bless you, well-behaved creeturs!"[A]

[Footnote A: As the reader of German may be curious to see a specimen of the original, we give this last passage, which contains, in a brief compass, many distinctive features of the Alemannic dialect:—

"Nei so lucg me doch, wie cha mi Meiddeli springe! 'Chunnsch mi ueber,' seits und lacht, 'und witt mi, se hol mi!' All' wil en andere Weg, und alliwil anderi Spruengli! Fall mer nit sel Reiuli ab!—Do hemmer's, i sags io— Hani's denn nit gseit? Doch gauckelet's witers und witers, Groblet uf alle Vieren, und stellt si wieder uf d' Beinli, Schlieft in d' Huerst—iez such mer's eisl—doert gueggelet's use, Wart, i chumm! Druf rueefts mer wieder hinter de Baeume: 'Roth wo bin i iez!'—und het si urige Phatest. Aber wie de gosch, wirsch sichtli groesser und schoener. Wo di liebligen Othern weiht, so faerbt si der Rase Grueener rechts und links, es stoehn in saftige Triebe Gras und Chrueter uf, es stoehn in frischere Gstalte Farbigi Blueemli do, und d' Immli choemmen und suge. 'S Wasserstelzli chunnt, und lueg doch,'s Wuli vo Todtnau! Alles will di bschauen, und Alles will di bigruesse, Und di fruendlig Herz git alle fruendligi Rede: 'Choemmet ihr ordlige Thierli, do hender, esset und trinket! Witers goht mi Weg, Gsegott, ihr ordlige Thierli!'" ]

The poet follows the stream through her whole course, never dropping the figure, which is adapted, with infinite adroitness, and with the play of a fancy as wayward and unrestrained as her own waters, to all her changing aspects. Beside the Catholic chapel of Fair-Beeches she pauses to listen to the mass; but farther down the valley becomes an apostate, and attends the Lutheran service in the Husemer church. Stronger and statelier grown, she trips along with the step of a maiden conscious of her own beauty, and the poet clothes her in the costume of an Alemannic bride, with a green kirtle of a hundred folds, and a stomacher of Milan gauze, "like a loose cloud on a morning sky in spring-time." Thus equipped, she wanders at will over the broader meadows, around the feet of vineyard-hills, visits villages and churches, or stops to gossip with the lusty young millers. But the woman's destiny is before her; she cannot escape it; and the time is drawing near when her wild, singing, pastoral being shall be absorbed in that of the strong male stream, the bright-eyed son of the Alps, who has come so far to woo and win her.

Daughter o' Feldberg, half-and-half I've got a suspicion How as you've virtues and faults enough now to choose ye a husband. Castin' y'r eyes down, are you? Pickin' and plattin' y'r ribbons? Don't be so foolish, wench!—She thinks I know nothin' about it, How she's already engaged, and each is a-waitin' for t'other. Don't I know him, my darlin', the lusty young fellow, y'r sweetheart?

Over powerful rocks, and through the hedges and thickets, Right away from the snowy Swiss mountains he plunges at Rheineck Down to the lake, and straight ahead swims through it to Constance, Sayin': "'T's no use o' talkin', I'll have the gal I'm engaged to!"

But, as he reaches Stein, he goes a little more slowly, Leavin' the lake where he's decently washed his feet and his body. Diessenhofen don't please him,—no, nor the convent beside it. For'ard he goes to Schaffhausen, onto the rocks at the corner; There he says: "It's no use o' talkin', I'll git to my sweetheart: Body and life I'll stake, cravat and embroidered suspenders." Woop! but he jumps! And now he talks to hisself, goin' furder, Giddy, belike, in his head, but pushes for'ard to Rheinau, Eglisau, and Kaiserstuhl, and Zurzach, and Waldshut,— All are behind him, passin' one village after another Down to Grenzach, and out on the broad and beautiful bottoms Nigh unto Basle; and there he must stop and look after his license.

* * * * *

Look! isn't that y'r bridegroom a-comin' down yonder to meet you?— Yes, it's him, it's him, I hear't, for his voice is so jolly! Yes, it's him, it's him,—with his eyes as blue as the heavens, With his Swiss knee-breeches o' green, and suspenders o' velvet, With his shirt o' the color o' pearl, and buttons o' crystal, With his powerful loins, and his sturdy back and his shoulders, Grand in his gait, commandin', beautiful, free in his motions, Proud as a Basle Councilman,—yes, it's the big boy o' Gothard![B]

[Footnote B: The Rhine.]

The daring with which Hebel countrifies (or, rather, farmerizes, to translate Goethe's—word more literally) the spirit of natural objects, carrying his personifications to that point where the imaginative borders on the grotesque, is perhaps his strongest characteristic. His poetic faculty, putting on its Alemannic costume, seems to abdicate all ambition of moving in a higher sphere of society, but within the bounds it has chosen allows itself the utmost range of capricious enjoyment. In another pastoral, called "The Oatmeal Porridge," he takes the grain which the peasant has sown, makes it a sentient creature, and carries it through the processes of germination, growth, and bloom, without once dropping the figure or introducing an incongruous epithet. It is not only a child, but a child of the Black Forest, uttering its hopes, its anxieties, and its joys in the familiar dialect. The beetle, in his eyes, becomes a gross, hard-headed boor, carrying his sacks of blossom-meal, and drinking his mug of XX morning-dew; the stork parades about to show his red stockings; the spider is at once machinist and civil engineer; and even the sun, moon, and morning-star are not secure from the poet's familiarities. In his pastoral of "The Field-Watchmen," he ventures to say,—

Mister Schoolmaster Moon, with y'r forehead wrinkled with teachin', With y'r face full o' larnin', a plaster stuck on y'r cheek-bone, Say, do y'r children mind ye, and larn their psalm and their texes?

We much fear that this over-quaintness of fancy, to which the Alemannic dialect gives such a racy flavor, and which belongs, in a lesser degree, to the minds of the people who speak that dialect, cannot be successfully clothed in an English dress. Let us try, therefore, a little poem, the sentiment whereof is of universal application:—

THE CONTENTED FARMER.

I guess I'll take my pouch, and fill My pipe just once,—yes, that I will! Turn out my plough and home'ards go: Buck thinks, enough's been done, I know.

Why, when the Emperor's council's done, And he can hunt, and have his fun, He stops, I guess, at any tree, And fills his pipe as well as me.

But smokin' does him little good: He can't have all things as he would. His crown's a precious weight, at that: It isn't like my old straw hat.

He gits a deal o' tin, no doubt, But all the more he pays it out; And everywheres they beg and cry Heaps more than he can satisfy.

And when, to see that nothin' 's wrong, He plagues hisself the whole day long, And thinks, "I guess I've fixed it now," Nobody thanks him, anyhow.

And so, when in his bloody clo'es The Gineral out o' battle goes, He takes his pouch, too, I'll agree, And fills his pipe as well as me.

But in the wild and dreadfle fight, His pipe don't taste ezackly right: He's galloped here and galloped there, And things a'n't pleasant, anywhere.

And sich a cursin': "Thunder!" "Hell!" And "Devil!" (worse nor I can tell:) His grannydiers in blood lay down, And yonder smokes a burnin' town.

And when, a-travellin' to the Fairs, The merchant goes with all his wares, He takes a pouch o' th' best, I guess, And fills and smokes his pipe, no less.

Poor devil, 't isn't good for you! With all y'r gold, you've trouble, too. Twice two is four, if stocks'll rise: I see the figgers in your eyes.

It's hurry, worry, tare and tret; Ye ha'n't enough, the more ye get,— And couldn't use it, if ye had: No wonder that y'r pipe tastes bad!

But good, thank God! and wholesome's mine: The bottom-wheat is growin' fine, And God, o' mornin's, sends the dew, And sends his breath o' blessin', too.

And, home, there's Nancy bustlin' round: The supper's ready, I'll be bound, And youngsters waitin'. Lord! I vow I dunno which is smartest, now.

My pipe tastes good; the reason's plain: (I guess I'll fill it once again:) With cheerful heart, and jolly mood, And goin' home, all things is good.

Hebel's narrative poems abound with the wayward pranks of a fancy which seems a little too restive to be entirely controlled by his artistic sense; but they possess much dramatic truth and power. He delights in the supernatural element, but approaches it from the gentler human side. In "The Carbuncle," only, we find something of that weird, uncanny atmosphere which casts its glamour around the "Tam O'Shanter" of Burns. A more satisfactory illustration of his peculiar qualities is "The Ghost's Visit on the Feldberg,"—a story told by a loafer of Basle to a group of beer-drinkers in the tavern at Todtnau, a little village at the foot of the mountain. This is, perhaps, the most popular of Hebel's poems, and we therefore translate it entire. The superstition that a child born on Sunday has the power of seeing spirits is universal among the German peasantry.

THE GHOST'S VISIT ON THE FELDBERG.

Hark ye, fellows o' Todtnau, if ever I told you the Scythe-Ghost[C] Was a spirit of Evil, I've now got a different story. Out of the town am I,—yes, that I'll honestly own to,— Related to merchants, at seven tables free to take pot-luck. But I'm a Sunday's child; and wherever the ghosts at the cross-roads Stand in the air, in vaults, and cellars, and out-o'-way places,— Guardin' hidden money with eyes like fiery sauce-pans, Washin' with bitter tears the spot where somebody's murdered, Shovellin' the dirt, and scratchin' it over with nails all so bloody,— Clear as day I can see, when it lightens. Ugh! how they whimper! Also, whenever with beautiful blue eyes the heavenly angels, Deep in the night, in silent, sleepin' villages wander, Peekin' in at the windows, and talkin' together so pleasant, Smilin' one at the t'other, and settin' outside o' the house-doors, So that the pious folks shall take no harm while they're sleepin': Then ag'in, when in couples or threes they walk in the grave-yard, Talkin' in this like: "There a faithful mother is layin'; And here's a man that was poor, but took no advantage o' no one: Take your rest, for you're tired,—we'll waken ye up when the time comes!" Clearly I see by the light o' the stars, and I hear them a-talkin'. Many I know by their names, and speak to, whenever I meet 'em, Give 'em the time o' day, and ask 'em, and answer their questions. "How do ye do?" "How's y'r watch?" "Praise God, it's tolerable, thank you!" Believe it, or not! Well, once on a time my cousin, he sent me Over to Todtnau, on business with all sorts o' troublesome people, Where you've coffee to drink, and biscuit they give you to soak in 't. "Don't you stop on the road, nor gabble whatever comes foremost," Hooted my cousin at startin', "nor don't you let go o' your snuff-box, Leavin' it round in the tavern, as gentlemen do, for the next time." Up and away I went, and all that my cousin he'd ordered Fairly and squarely I fixed. At the sign o' the Eagle in Todtnau Set for a while; then, sure o' my way, tramped off ag'in, home'ards, Nigh by the village, I reckoned,—but found myself climbin' the Feldberg, Lured by the birdies, and down by the brooks the beautiful posies: That's a weakness o' mine,—I ran like a fool after such things. Now it was dusk, and the birdies hushed up, settin' still on the branches. Hither and yonder a starlie stuck its head through the darkness, Peekin' out, as oncertain whether the sun was in bed yet,— Whether it mightn't come, and called to the other ones: "Come now!" Then I knowed I was lost, and laid myself down,—I was weary: There, you know, there's a hut, and I found an armful o' straw in 't. "Here's a go!" I thinks to myself, "and I wish I was safely Cuddled in bed to home,—or 't was midnight, and some little spirit Somewhere popped out, as o' nights when it's twelve they're accustomed, Passin' the time with me, friendly, till winds that blow early o' mornin's Blow out the heavenly lights, and I see the way back to the village." Now, as thinkin' in this like, I felt all over my watch-face,— Dark as pitch all around,—and felt with my finger the hour-hand, Found it was nigh onto 'leven, and hauled my pipe from my pocket, Thinkin': "Maybe a bit of a smoke'll keep me from snoozin'": Thunder! all of a sudden beside me was two of 'em talkin', Like as they'd business together! You'd better believe that I listened. "Say, a'n't I late a-comin'? Because there was, over in Mambach, Dyin', a girl with pains in the bones and terrible fever: Now, but she's easy! I held to her mouth the drink o' departure, So that the sufferin' ceased, and softly lowered the eyelids, Sayin': 'Sleep, and in peace,—I'll waken thee up when the time comes!' Do me the favor, brother: fetch in the basin o' silver Water, ever so little: my scythe, as you see, must be whetted." "Whetted?" says I to myself, "and a spirit?" and peeked from the window. Lo and behold, there sat a youngster with wings that was golden; White was his mantle, white, and his girdle the color o' roses, Fair and lovely to see, and beside him two lights all a-burnin'. "All the good spirits," says I, "Mr. Angel, God have you in keepin'!" "Praise their Master, the Lord," said the angel; "God thank you, as I do!" "Take no offence, Mr. Ghost, and by y'r good leave and permission, Tell me, what have you got for to mow?" "Why, the scythe!" was his answer. "Yes," says I, "for I see it; and that is my question exackly, What you're goin' to do with the scythe." "Why, to mow!" was his answer. Then I ventur'd to say: "And that is my question exackly, What you're goin' to mow, supposin' you're willin' to tell me." "Grass! And what is your business so late up here in the night-time?" "Nothin' special," I answered; "I'm burnin' a little tobacco. Lost my way, or most likely I'd be at the Eagle, in Todtnau. But to come to the subject, supposin' it isn't a secret, Tell me, what do you make o' the grass?" And he answered me: "Fodder!" "Don't understand it," says I; "for the Lord has no cows up in heaven." "Not precisely a cow," he remarked, "but heifers and asses. Seest, up yonder, the star?" and he pointed one out with his finger. "There's the ass o' the Christmas-Child, and Fridolin's heifers,[D] Breathin' the starry air, and waitin' for grass that I bring 'em: Grass doesn't grow there,—nothin' grows but the heavenly raisins, Milk and honey a-runnin' in rivers, plenty as water: But they're particular cattle,—grass they must have every mornin', Mouthfuls o' hay, and drink from earthly fountains they're used to. So for them I'm a-whettin' my scythe, and soon must be mowin': Wouldn't it be worth while, if politely you'd offer to help me?" So the angel he talked, and this way I answered the angel: "Hark ye, this it is, just: and I'll go wi' the greatest o' pleasure. Folks from the town know nothin' about it: we write and we cipher, Reckon up money,—that we can do!—and measure and weigh out, Unload, and on-load, and eat and drink without any trouble. All that we want for the belly, in kitchen, pantry, and cellar, Comes in lots through every gate, in baskets and boxes, Runs in every street, and cries at every corner: 'Buy my cherries!' and 'Buy my butter!' and 'Look at my salad!' 'Buy my onions!' and 'Here's your carrots!' and 'Spinage and parsley!' 'Lucifer matches! Lucifer matches!' 'Cabbage and turnips!' 'Here's your umbrellas!' 'Caraway-seed and juniper-berries! Cheap for cash, and all to be traded for sugar and coffee!' Say, Mr. Angel, didst ever drink coffee? how do you like it?" "Stop with y'r nonsense!" then he said, but he couldn't help laughin'; "No, we drink but the heavenly air, and eat nothin' but raisins, Four on a day o' the week, and afterwards five on a Sunday. Come, if you want to go with me, now, for I'm off to my mowin', Back o' Todtnau, there on the grassy holt by the highway." "Yes, Mr. Angel, that will I truly, seein' you're willin': Seems to me that it's cooler: give me y'r scythe for to carry: Here's a pipe and a pouch,—you're welcome to smoke, if you want to." While I was talkin', "Poohoo!" cried the angel. A fiery man stood, Quicker than lightnin', beside me. "Light us the way to the village!" Said he. And truly before us marched, a-burnin', the Poohoo, Over stock and rock, through the bushes, a travellin' torch-light. "Handy, isn't it?" laughin', the angel said. —"What are ye doin'? Why do you nick at y'r flint? You can light y'r pipe at the Poohoo. Use him whenever you like: but it seems to me you're a-frightened,— You, and a Sunday's-child, as you are: do you think he will bite you?" "No, he ha'n't bit me; but this you'll allow me to say, Mr. Angel,— Half-and-half I mistrust him: besides, my tobacco's a-burnin'. That's a weakness o' mine,—I'm afeard o' them fiery creeturs: Give me seventy angels, instead o' this big burnin' devil!" "Really, it's dreadfle," the angel says he, "that men is so silly, Fearful o' ghosts and spectres, and skeery without any reason. Two of 'em only is dangerous, two of 'em hurtful to mankind: One of 'em's known by the name o' Delusion, and Worry the t'other. Him, Delusion, 's a dweller in wine: from cans and decanters Up to the head he rises, and turns your sense to confusion. This is the ghost that leads you astray in forest and highway: Undermost, uppermost, hither and yon the ground is a-rollin', Bridges bendin', and mountains movin', and everything double. Hark ye, keep out of his way!" "Aha!" I says to the angel, "There you prick me, but not to the blood: I see what you're after. Sober am I, as a judge. To be sure, I emptied my tankard Once, at the Eagle,—once,—and the landlord 'll tell you the same thing, S'posin' you doubt me. And now, pray, tell me who is the t'other?" "Who is the t'other? Don't know without askin'?" answered the angel. "He's a terrible ghost: the Lord forbid you should meet him! When you waken early, at four or five in the mornin', There he stands a-waitin' with burnin eyes at y'r bed-side, Gives you the time o' day with blazin switches and pinchers: Even prayin' don't help, nor helps all your Ave Marias! When you begin 'em, he takes your jaws and claps 'em together; Look to heaven, he comes and blinds y'r eyes with his ashes; Be you hungry, and eat, he pizons y'r soup with his wormwood; Take you a drink o' nights, he squeezes gall in the tankard; Run like a stag, he follows as close on y'r trail as a blood-hound; Creep like a shadow, be whispers: 'Good! we had best take it easy'; Kneels at y'r side in the church, and sets at y'r side in the tavern. Go wherever you will, there's ghosts a-hoverin' round you. Shut your eyes in y'r bed, they mutter: 'There 's no need o' hurry; By-and-by you can sleep, but listen! we've somethin' to tell you: Have you forgot how you stoled? and how you cheated the orphans? Secretly sinned?'—and this, and t'other; and when they have finished, Say it over ag'in, and you get little good o' your slumber." So the angel he talked, and, like iron under the hammer, Sparked and spirited the Poohoo. "Surely," I says to the angel, "Born on a Sunday was I, and friendly with many a preacher, Yet the Father protect me from these!" Says he to me, smilin': "Keep y'r conscience pure; it is better than crossin' and blessin'. Here we must part, for y'r way turns off and down to the village. Take the Poohoo along, but mind! put him out, in the meadow, Lest he should run in the village, settin' fire to the stables. God be with you and keep you!" And then says I: "Mr. Angel, God, the Father, protect you! Be sure, when you come to the city, Christmas evenin', call, and I'll hold it an honor to see you: Raisins I'll have at your service, and hippocras, if you like it. Chilly 's the air, o' evenin's, especially down by the river." Day was breakin' by this, and right there was Todtnau before me! Past, and onward to Basle I wandered, i' the shade and the coolness. When into Mambach I came, they bore a dead girl to the grave-yard, After the Holy Cross, and the faded banner o' Heaven, With the funeral garlands upon her, with sobbin' and weepin'. Ah, but she 'd heard what he said! he'll waken her up when the time comes. Afterwards, Tuesday it was, I got safely back to my cousin; But it turned out as he said,—I'd somewhere forgotten my snuff-box!

[Footnote C: Dengle-Geist, literally, "Whetting-Spirit." The exact meaning of dengeln is to sharpen a scythe by hammering the edge of the blade, which was practised before whetstones came in use.]

[Footnote D: According to an old legend, Fridolin (a favorite saint with the Catholic population of the Black Forest) harnessed two young heifers to a mighty fir-tree, and hauled it into the Rhine near Saeckingen, thereby damming the river and forcing it to take a new course, on the other side of the town.]

In this poem the hero of the story unconsciously describes himself by his manner of telling it,—a reflective action of the dramatic faculty, which Browning, among living poets, possesses in a marked degree. The "moral" is so skilfully inwoven into the substance of the narrative as to conceal the appearance of design, and the reader has swallowed the pill before its sugar-coating of fancy has dissolved in his mouth. There are few of Hebel's poems which were not written for the purpose of inculcating some wholesome lesson, but in none does this object prominently appear. Even where it is not merely implied, but directly expressed, he contrives to give it the air of having been accidentally suggested by the theme. In the following, which is the most pointedly didactic of all his productions, the characteristic fancy still betrays itself:—

THE GUIDE-POST.

D' ye know the road to th' bar'l o' flour? At break o' day let down the bars, And plough y'r wheat-field, hour by hour, Till sundown,—yes, till shine o' stars.

You peg away, the livelong day, Nor loaf about, nor gape around; And that's the road to the thrashin'-floor, And into the kitchen, I'll be bound!

D' ye know the road where dollars lays? Follow the red cents, here and there: For if a man leaves them, I guess, He won't find dollars anywhere.

D' ye know the road to Sunday's rest? Jist don't o' week-days be afeard; In field and workshop do y'r best, And Sunday comes itself, I've heerd. On Saturdays it's not fur off, And brings a basketful o' cheer,— A roast, and lots o' garden-stuff, And, like as not, a jug o' beer!

D' ye know the road to poverty? Turn in at any tavern-sign: Turn in,—it's temptin' as can be: There's bran'-new cards and liquor fine.

In the last tavern there's a sack, And, when the cash y'r pocket quits, Jist hang the wallet on y'r back,— You vagabond! see how it fits!

D' ye know what road to honor leads, And good old age?—a lovely sight! By way o' temperance, honest deeds, And tryin' to do y'r dooty right.

And when the road forks, ary side, And you're in doubt which one it is, Stand still, and let y'r conscience guide: Thank God, it can't lead much amiss!

And now, the road to church-yard gate You needn't ask! Go anywhere! For, whether roundabout or straight, All roads, at last, 'll bring you there.

Go, fearin' God, but lovin' more!— I've tried to be an honest guide,— You'll find the grave has got a door, And somethin' for you t'other side.

We could linger much longer over our simple, brave old poet, were we sure of the ability of the reader approximately to distinguish his features through the veil of translation. In turning the leaves of the smoky book, with its coarse paper and rude type,—which suggests to us, by-the-by, the fact that Hebel was accustomed to hang a book, which he wished especially to enjoy, in the chimney, for a few days,—we are tempted by "The Market-Women in Town," by "The Mother on Christmas-Eve," "The Morning-Star," and the charming fairy-story of "Riedliger's Daughter," but must be content to close our specimens, for the present, with a song of love,—"Hans und Verene,"—under the equivalent title of

JACK AND MAGGIE.

There's only one I'm after, And she's the one, I vow! If she was here, and standin' by, She is a gal so neat and spry, So neat and spry, I'd be in glory now!

It's so,—I'm hankerin' for her, And want to have her, too. Her temper's always gay, and bright, Her face like posies red and white, Both red and white, And eyes like posies blue.

And when I see her comin', My face gits red at once; My heart feels chokin'-like, and weak, And drops o' sweat run down my cheek, Yes, down my cheek,— Confound me for a dunce!

She spoke so kind, last Tuesday, When at the well we met: "Jack, give a lift! What ails you? Say! I see that somethin' 's wrong to-day: What's wrong to-day?" No, that I can't forget!

I know I'd ought to tell her, And wish I'd told her then; And if I wasn't poor and low, And sayin' it didn't choke me so, (It chokes me so,) I'd find a chance again.

Well, up and off I'm goin': She's in the field below: I'll try and let her know my mind; And if her answer isn't kind, If 't isn't kind, I'll jine the ranks, and go!

I'm but a poor young fellow, Yes, poor enough, no doubt: But ha'n't, thank God, done nothin' wrong, And be a man as stout and strong, As stout and strong, As any roundabout.

What's rustlin' in the bushes? I see a movin' stalk: The leaves is openin': there's a dress! O Lord, forbid it! but I guess— I guess—I guess Somebody's heard me talk!

"Ha! here I am! you've got me! So keep me, if you can! I've guessed it ever since last Fall, And Tuesday morn I saw it all, I saw it all! Speak out, then, like a man!

"Though rich you a'n't in money, Nor rich in goods to sell, An honest heart is more than gold, And hands you've got for field and fold, For house and fold, And—Jack—I love you well!"

"O Maggie, say it over! O Maggie, is it so? I couldn't longer bear the doubt: 'Twas hell,—but now you've drawed me out, You've drawed me out! And will I? Won't I, though!"

The later years of Hebel's life quietly passed away in the circle of his friends at Carlsruhe. After the peculiar mood which called forth the Alemannic poems had passed away, he seems to have felt no further temptation to pursue his literary success. His labors, thenceforth, were chiefly confined to the preparation of a Biblical History, for schools, and the editing of the "Rhenish House-Friend," an illustrated calendar for the people, to which he gave a character somewhat similar to that of Franklin's "Poor Richard." His short, pithy narratives, each with its inevitable, though unobtrusive moral, are models of style. The calendar became so popular, under his management, that forty thousand copies were annually printed. He finally discontinued his connection with it, in 1819, in consequence of an interference with his articles on the part of the censor.

In society Hebel was a universal favorite. Possessing, in his personal appearance, no less than in his intellect, a marked individuality, he carried a fresh, vital, inspiring element into every company which he visited. His cheerfulness was inexhaustible, his wit keen and lambent without being acrid, his speech clear, fluent, and genial, and his fund of anecdote commensurate with his remarkable narrative power. He was exceedingly frank, joyous, and unconstrained in his demeanor; fond of the pipe and the beer-glass; and as one of his maxims was, "Not to close any door through which Fortune might enter," he not only occasionally bought a lottery-ticket, but was sometimes to be seen, during the season, at the roulette-tables of Baden-Baden. One of his friends declares, however, that he never obtruded "the clergyman" at inappropriate times!

In person he was of medium height, with a body of massive Teutonic build, a large, broad head, inclined a little towards one shoulder, the eyes small, brown, and mischievously sparkling, the hair short, crisp, and brown, the nose aquiline, and the mouth compressed, with the commencement of a smile stamped in the corners. He was careless in his gait, and negligent in his dress. Warm-hearted and tender, and especially attracted towards women and children, the cause of his celibacy always remained a mystery to his friends.

The manner of his death, finally, illustrated the genuine humanity of his nature. In September, 1826, although an invalid at the time, he made a journey to Mannheim for the sake of procuring a mitigation of the sentence of a condemned poacher, whose case appealed strongly to his sympathy. His exertions on behalf of the poor man so aggravated his disease that he was soon beyond medical aid. Only his corpse, crowned with laurel, returned to Carlsruhe. Nine years afterwards a monument was erected to his memory in the park attached to the Ducal palace. Nor have the inhabitants of the Black Forest failed in worthy commemoration of their poet's name. A prominent peak among the mountains which inclose the valley of his favorite "Meadow" has been solemnly christened "Hebel's Mount"; and a flower of the Forest—the Anthericum of Linnaeus—now figures in German botanies as the Hebelia Alemannica.



THE FORESTER.

Then bless thy secret growth, nor catch At noise, but thrive unseen and dumb, Keep clean, bear fruit, earn life, and watch Till the white-winged reapers come.—Henry Vaughan

I had never thought of knowing a man so thoroughly of the country as this friend of mine, and so purely a son of Nature. Perhaps he has the profoundest passion for it of any one living; and had the human sentiment been as tender from the first, and as pervading, we might have had pastorals of which Virgil and Theocritus would have envied him the authorship, had they chanced to be his contemporaries. As it is, he has come nearer the antique spirit than any of our native poets, and touched the fields and groves and streams of his native town with a classic interest that shall not fade. Some of his verses are suffused with an elegiac tenderness, as if the woods and fields bewailed the absence of their forester, and murmured their griefs meanwhile to one another,—responsive like idyls. Living in close companionship with Nature, his Muse breathes the spirit and voice of poetry; his excellence lying herein: for when the heart is once divorced from the senses and all sympathy with common things, then poetry has fled, and the love that sings.

The most welcome of companions, this plain countryman. One shall not meet with thoughts invigorating like his often; coming so scented of mountain and field breezes and rippling springs, so like a luxuriant clod from under forest-leaves, moist and mossy with earth-spirits. His presence is tonic, like ice-water in dog-days to the parched citizen pent in chambers and under brazen ceilings. Welcome as the gurgle of brooks, the dripping of pitchers,—then drink and be cool! He seems one with things, of Nature's essence and core, knit of strong timbers, most like a wood and its inhabitants. There are in him sod and shade, woods and waters manifold, the mould and mist of earth and sky. Self-poised and sagacious as any denizen of the elements, he has the key to every animal's brain, every plant, every shrub; and were an Indian to flower forth, and reveal the secrets hidden in his cranium, it would not be more surprising than the speech of our Sylvanus. He must belong to the Homeric age,—is older than pastures and gardens, as if he were of the race of heroes, and one with the elements. He, of all men, seems to be the native New-Englander, as much so as the oak, the granite ledge, our best sample of an indigenous American, untouched by the Old Country, unless he came down from Thor, the Northman; as yet unfathered by any, and a nondescript in the books of natural history.

A peripatetic philosopher, and out of doors for the best parts of his days and nights, he has manifold weather and seasons in him, and the manners of an animal of probity and virtues unstained. Of our moralists he seems the wholesomest; and the best republican citizen in the world,—always at home, and minding his own affairs. Perhaps a little over-confident sometimes, and stiffly individual, dropping society clean out of his theories, while standing friendly in his strict sense of friendship, there is in him an integrity and sense of justice that make possible and actual the virtues of Sparta and the Stoics, and all the more welcome to us in these times of shuffling and of pusillanimity. Plutarch would have made him immortal in his pages, had he lived before his day. Nor have we any so modern as be,—his own and ours; too purely so to be appreciated at once. A scholar by birthright, and an author, his fame has not yet travelled far from the banks of the rivers he has described in his books; but I hazard only the truth in affirming of his prose, that in substance and sense it surpasses that of any naturalist of his time, and that he is sure of a reading in the future. There are fairer fishes in his pages than any now swimming in our streams, and some sleep of his on the banks of the Merrimack by moonlight that Egypt never rivalled; a morning of which Memnon might have envied the music, and a greyhound that was meant for Adonis; some frogs, too, better than any of Aristophanes. Perhaps we have had no eyes like his since Pliny's time. His senses seem double, giving him access to secrets not easily read by other men: his sagacity resembling that of the beaver and the bee, the dog and the deer; an instinct for seeing and judging, as by some other or seventh sense, dealing with objects as if they were shooting forth from his own mind mythologically, thus completing Nature all round to his senses, and a creation of his at the moment. I am sure he knows the animals, one by one, and everything else knowable in our town, and has named them rightly as Adam did in Paradise, if he be not that ancestor himself. His works are pieces of exquisite sense, celebrations of Nature's virginity, exemplified by rare learning and original observations. Persistently independent and manly, he criticizes men and times largely, urging and defending his opinions with the spirit and pertinacity befitting a descendant of him of the Hammer. A head of mixed genealogy like his, Franco-Norman crossed by Scottish and New-England descent, may be forgiven a few characteristic peculiarities and trenchant traits of thinking, amidst his great common sense and fidelity to the core of natural things. Seldom has a head circumscribed so much of the sense of Cosmos as this footed intelligence,—nothing less than all out-of-doors sufficing his genius and scopes, and, day by day, through all weeks and seasons, the year round.

If one would find the wealth of wit there is in this plain man, the information, the sagacity, the poetry, the piety, let him take a walk with him, say of a winter's afternoon, to the Blue Water, or anywhere about the outskirts of his village-residence. Pagan as he shall outwardly appear, yet he soon shall be seen to be the hearty worshipper of whatsoever is sound and wholesome in Nature,—a piece of russet probity and sound sense that she delights to own and honor. His talk shall be suggestive, subtile, and sincere, under as many masks and mimicries as the shows he passes, and as significant,—Nature choosing to speak through her chosen mouth-piece,—cynically, perhaps, sometimes, and searching into the marrows of men and times he chances to speak of, to his discomfort mostly, and avoidance. Nature, poetry, life,—not politics, not strict science, not society as it is,—are his preferred themes: the new Pantheon, probably, before he gets far, to the naming of the gods some coming Angelo, some Pliny, is to paint and describe. The world is holy, the things seen symbolizing the Unseen, and worthy of worship so, the Zoroastrian rites most becoming a nature so fine as ours in this thin newness, this worship being so sensible, so promotive of possible pieties,—calling us out of doors and under the firmament, where health and wholesomeness are finely insinuated into our souls,—not as idolaters, but as idealists, the seekers of the Unseen through images of the Invisible.

I think his religion of the most primitive type, and inclusive of all natural creatures and things, even to "the sparrow that falls to the ground,"—though never by shot of his,—and, for whatsoever is manly in man, his worship may compare with that of the priests and heroes of pagan times. Nor is he false to these traits under any guise,—worshipping at unbloody altars, a favorite of the Unseen, Wisest, and Best. Certainly he is better poised and more nearly self-reliant than other men.

Perhaps he deals best with matter, properly, though very adroitly with mind, with persons, as he knows them best, and sees them from Nature's circle, wherein he dwells habitually. I should say he inspired the sentiment of love, if, indeed, the sentiment he awakens did not seem to partake of a yet purer sentiment, were that possible,—but nameless from its excellency. Friendly he is, and holds his friends by bearings as strict in their tenderness and consideration as are the laws of his thinking,—as prompt and kindly equitable,—neighborly always, and as apt for occasions as he is strenuous against meddling with others in things not his.

I know of nothing more creditable to his greatness than the thoughtful regard, approaching to reverence, by which he has held for many years some of the best persons of his time, living at a distance, and wont to make their annual pilgrimage, usually on foot, to the master,—a devotion very rare in these times of personal indifference, if not of confessed unbelief in persons and ideas.

He has been less of a housekeeper than most, has harvested more wind and storm, sun and sky; abroad night and day with his leash of keen scents, bounding any game stirring, and running it down, for certain, to be spread on the dresser of his page, and served as a feast to the sound intelligences, before he has done with it. We have been accustomed to consider him the salt of things so long that they must lose their savor without his to season them. And when he goes hence, then Pan is dead, and Nature ailing throughout.

His friend sings him thus, with the advantages of his Walden to show him in Nature:—

"It is not far beyond the Village church, After we pass the wood that skirts the road, A Lake,—the blue-eyed Walden, that doth smile Most tenderly upon its neighbor Pines; And they, as if to recompense this love, In double beauty spread their branches forth. This Lake has tranquil loveliness and breadth, And, of late years, has added to its charms; For one attracted to its pleasant edge Has built himself a little Hermitage, Where with much piety he passes life.

"More fitting place I cannot fancy now, For such a man to let the line run off The mortal reel,—such patience hath the Lake, Such gratitude and cheer is in the Pines. But more than either lake or forest's depths This man has in himself: a tranquil man, With sunny sides where well the fruit is ripe, Good front and resolute bearing to this life, And some serener virtues, which control This rich exterior prudence,—virtues high, That in the principles of Things are set, Great by their nature, and consigned to him, Who, like a faithful Merchant, does account To God for what he spends, and in what way. Thrice happy art thou, Walden, in thyself! Such purity is in thy limpid springs,— In those green shores which do reflect in thee, And in this man who dwells upon thy edge, A holy man within a Hermitage. May all good showers fall gently into thee, May thy surrounding forests long be spared, And may the Dweller on thy tranquil marge There lead a life of deep tranquillity, Pure as thy Waters, handsome as thy Shores, And with those virtues which are like the Stars!"



METHODS OF STUDY IN NATURAL HISTORY.

VII.

I come now to an obscure part of my subject, very difficult to present in a popular form, and yet so important in the scientific investigations of our day that I cannot omit it entirely. I allude to what are called by naturalists Collateral Series or Parallel Types. These are by no means difficult to trace, because they are connected by seeming resemblances, which, though very likely to mislead and perplex the observer, yet naturally suggest the association of such groups. Let me introduce the subject with the statement of some facts.

There are in Australia numerous Mammalia, occupying the same relation and answering the same purposes as the Mammalia of other countries. Some of them are domesticated by the natives, and serve them with meat, milk, wool, as our domesticated animals serve us. Representatives of almost all types, Wolves, Foxes, Sloths, Bears, Weasels, Martens, Squirrels, Rats, etc., are found there; and yet, though all these animals resemble ours so closely that the English settlers have called many of them by the same names, there are no genuine Wolves, Foxes, Sloths, Bears, Weasels, Martens, Squirrels, or Rats in Australia. The Australian Mammalia are peculiar to the region where they are found, and are all linked together by two remarkable structural features which distinguish them from all other Mammalia and unite them under one head as the so-called Marsupials. They bring forth their young in an imperfect condition, and transfer them to a pouch, where they remain attached to the teats of the mother till their development is as far advanced as that of other Mammalia at the time of their birth; and they are further characterized by an absence of that combination of transverse fibres forming the large bridge which unites the two hemispheres of the brain in all the other members of their class. Here, then, is a series of animals parallel with ours, separated from them by anatomical features, but so united with them by form and external features that many among them have been at first associated together.

This is what Cuvier has called subordination of characters, distinguishing between characters that control the organization and those that are not essentially connected with it. The skill of the naturalist consists in detecting the difference between the two, so that he may not take the more superficial features as the basis of his classification, instead of those important ones which, though often less easily recognized, are more deeply rooted in the organization. It is a difference of the same nature as that between affinity and analogy, to which I have alluded before, when speaking of the ingrafting of certain features of one type upon animals of another type, thus producing a superficial resemblance, not truly characteristic. In the Reptiles, for instance, there are two groups,—those devoid of scales, with naked skin, laying numerous eggs, but hatching their young in an imperfect state, and the Scaly Reptiles, which lay comparatively few eggs, but whose young, when hatched, are completely developed, and undergo no subsequent metamorphosis. Yet, notwithstanding this difference in essential features of structure, and in the mode of reproduction and development, there is such an external resemblance between certain animals belonging to the two groups that they were associated together even by so eminent a naturalist as Linnaeus. Compare, for instance, the Serpents among the Scaly Reptiles with the Caecilians among the Naked Reptiles. They have the same elongated form, and are both destitute of limbs; the head in both is on a level with the body, without any contraction behind it, such as marks the neck in the higher Reptiles, and moves only by the action of the back-bone; they are singularly alike in their external features, but the young of the Serpent are hatched in a mature condition, while the young of the type to which the Caecilians belong undergo a succession of metamorphoses before attaining to a resemblance to the parent. Or compare the Lizard and the Salamander, in which the likeness is perhaps even more striking; for any inexperienced observer would mistake one for the other. Both are superior to the Serpents and Caecilians, for in them the head moves freely on the neck and they creep on short imperfect legs. But the Lizard is clothed with scales, while the body of the Salamander is naked, and the young of the former is complete when hatched, while the Tadpole born from the Salamander has a life of its own to live, with certain changes to pass through before it assumes its mature condition; during the early part of its life it is even destitute of legs, and has gills like the Fishes. Above the Lizards and Salamanders, highest in the class of Reptiles, stand two other collateral types,—the Turtles at the head of the Scaly Reptiles, the Toads and Frogs at the Lead of the Naked Reptiles. The external likeness between these two groups is perhaps less striking than between those mentioned above, on account of the large shield of the Turtle. But there are Turtles with a soft covering, and there are some Toads with a hard shield over the head and neck at least, and both groups are alike distinguished by the shortness and breadth of the body and by the greater development of the limbs as compared with the lower Reptiles. But here again there is the same essential difference in the mode of development of their young as distinguishes all the rest. The two series may thus be contrasted:—

Naked Reptiles. Toads and Frogs, Salamanders, Caecilians.

Scaly Reptiles. Turtles, Lizards, Serpents.

Such corresponding groups or parallel types, united only by external resemblance, and distinguished from each other by essential elements of structure, exist among all animals, though they are less striking among Birds on account of the uniformity of that class. Yet even there we may trace such analogies,—as between the Palmate or Aquatic Birds, for instance, and the Birds of Prey, or between the Frigate Bird and the Kites. Among Fishes such analogies are very common, often suggesting a comparison even with land animals, though on account of the scales and spines of the former the likeness may not be easily traced. But the common names used by the fishermen often indicate these resemblances, —as, for instance, Sea-Vulture, Sea-Eagle, Cat-Fish, Flying-Fish, Sea-Porcupine, Sea-Cow, Sea-Horse, and the like. In the branch of Mollusks, also, the same superficial analogies are found. In the lowest class of this division of the Animal Kingdom there is a group so similar to the Polyps, that, until recently, they have been associated with them,—the Bryozoa. They are very small animals, allied to the Clams by the plan of their structure, but they have a resemblance to the Polyps on account of a radiating wreath of feelers around the upper part of their body: yet, when examined closely, this wreath is found to be incomplete; it does not, form a circle, but leaves an open space between the two ends, where they approach each other, so that it has a horseshoe outline, and partakes of the bilateral symmetry characteristic of its type and on which its own structure is based. These series have not yet been very carefully traced, and young naturalists should turn their attention to them, and be prepared to draw the nicest distinction between analogies and true affinities among animals.

VIII.

After this digression, let us proceed to a careful examination of the natural groups of animals called Families by naturalists,—a subject already briefly alluded to in a previous chapter. Families are natural assemblages of animals of less extent than Orders, but, like Orders, Classes, and Branches, founded upon certain categories of structure, which are as distinct for this kind of group as for all the other divisions in the classification of the Animal Kingdom.

That we may understand the true meaning of these divisions, we must not be misled by the name given by naturalists to this kind of group. Here, as in so many other instances, a word already familiar, and that had become, as it were, identified with the special sense in which it had been used, has been adopted by science and has received a new signification. When naturalists speak of Families among animals, they do not allude to the progeny of a known stock, as we designate, in common parlance, the children or the descendants of known parents by the word family; they understand by Families natural groups of different kinds of animals, having no genetic relations so far as we know, but agreeing with one another closely enough to leave the impression of a more or less remote common parentage. The difficulty here consists in determining the natural limits of such groups, and in tracing the characteristic features by which they may be defined; for individual investigators differ greatly as to the degree of resemblance existing between the members of many Families, and there is no kind of group which presents greater diversity of circumscription in the classifications of animals proposed by different naturalists than these so-called Families.

It should be remembered, however, that, unless a sound criterion be applied to the limitation of Families, they, like all other groups introduced into zooelogical systems, must forever remain arbitrary divisions, as they have been hitherto. A retrospective glance at the progress of our science during the past century, in this connection, may perhaps help us to solve the difficulty. Linnaeus, in his System of Nature, does not admit Families; he has only four kinds of groups,—Classes, Orders, Genera, and Species. It was among plants that naturalists first perceived those general traits of resemblance which exist everywhere among the members of natural families, and added this kind of group to the framework of their system. In France, particularly, this method was pursued with success; and the improvements thus introduced by the French botanists were so great, and rendered their classification so superior to that of Linnaeus, that the botanical systems in which Families were introduced were called natural systems, in contradistinction especially to the botanical classification of Linnaeus, which was founded upon the organs of reproduction, and which received thenceforth the name of the sexual system of plants. The same method so successfully used by botanists was soon introduced into Zooelogy by the French naturalists of the beginning of this century,—Lamarck, Latreille, and Cuvier. But, to this day, the limitation of Families among animals has not yet reached the precision which it has among plants, and I see no other reason for the difference than the absence of a leading principle to guide us in Zooelogy.