Library of the Worlds Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Volume 4 | Page 7

opinion of
his fellow-men of his own time, and he desired to make his conduct
coincide with his wishes; but not fear of censure, not the prospect of
applause could tempt him to swerve from rectitude, and the praise
which he coveted was the sympathy of that moral sentiment which
exists in every human breast, and goes forth only to the welcome of
virtue.
There have been soldiers who have achieved mightier victories in the
field, and made conquests more nearly corresponding to the
boundlessness of selfish ambition; statesmen who have been connected
with more startling upheavals of society: but it is the greatness of
Washington that in public trusts he used power solely for the public
good; that he was the life and moderator and stay of the most
momentous revolution in human affairs; its moving impulse and its
restraining power....
This also is the praise of Washington: that never in the tide of time has
any man lived who had in so great a degree the almost divine faculty to
command the confidence of his fellow-men and rule the willing.
Wherever he became known, in his family, his neighborhood, his
county, his native State, the continent, the camp, civil life, among the
common people, in foreign courts, throughout the civilized world, and
even among the savages, he, beyond all other men, had the confidence
of his kind.
Copyrighted by D. Appleton and Company, New York.

JOHN AND MICHAEL BANIM
(1798-1846) (1796-1874)
Of the writers who have won esteem by telling the pathetic stories of
their country's people, the names of John and Michael Banim are
ranked among the Irish Gael not lower than that of Sir Walter Scott
among the British Gael. The works of the Banim brothers continued the
same sad and fascinating story of the "mere Irish" which Maria
Edgeworth and Lady Morgan had laid to the hearts of English readers
in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century days. The Banim
family was one of those which belonged to the class of "middlemen,"
people so designated in Ireland who were neither rich nor poor, but in
the fortunate mean. The family home was in the historic town of
Kilkenny, famous alike for its fighting confederation and its fighting
cats. Here Michael was born August 5th, 1796, and John April 3d, 1798.
Michael lived to a green old age, and survived his younger brother John
twenty-eight years, less seventeen days; he died at Booterstown,
August 30th, 1874.
[Illustration: JOHN BANIM]
The first stories of this brotherly collaboration in letters appeared in
1825 without mark of authorship, as recitals contributed for instruction
and amusement about the hearth-stone of an Irish household, called
'The O'Hara Family.' The minor chords of the soft music of the Gaelic
English as it fell from the tongues of Irish lads and lasses, whether in
note of sorrow or of sport, had already begun to touch with winsome
tenderness the stolid Saxon hearts, when that idyl of their country's
penal days, 'The Bit o' Writin',' was sent out from the O'Hara fireside.
The almost instantaneous success and popularity of their first stories
speedily broke down the anonymity of the Banims, and publishers
became eager and gain-giving. About two dozen stories were published
before the death of John, in 1842. The best-known of them, in addition
to the one already mentioned, are 'The Boyne Water,' 'The Croppy,' and
'Father Connell.'
The fact that during the long survival of Michael no more of the Banim

stories appeared, is sometimes called in as evidence that the latter had
little to do with the writing of the series. Michael and John, it was well
known, had worked lovingly together, and Michael claimed a part in
thirteen of the tales, without excluding his brother from joint authorship.
Exactly what each wrote of the joint productions has never been known.
A single dramatic work of the Banim brothers has attained to a position
in the standard drama, the play of 'Damon and Pythias,' a free
adaptation from an Italian original, written by John Banim at the
instance of Richard Lalor Shiel. The songs are also attributed to John. It
is but just to say that the great emigration to the United States which
absorbed the Irish during the '40's and '50's depreciated the sale of such
works as those of the Banims to the lowest point, and Michael had
good reason, aside from the loss of his brother's aid, to lay down his
pen. The audience of the Irish story-teller had gone away across the
great western sea. There was nothing to do but sit by the lonesome
hearth and await one's own to-morrow for the voyage of the greater sea.
THE PUBLICAN'S DREAM
From 'The Bit o' Writin' and Other Tales'
The fair-day had passed over in a little straggling