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 Würtemberg, 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