CONTENTS BANKERS AS CREATORS OF LITERATURE. 1.-William Paterson, 1658-1719......with portrait 29 II.—John Law, 1671-1729..... ...with portrait 33 III.-Sir William Forbes, 1739-1806... with portrait 37 IV.—David Ricardo, 1772-1823.......with portrait 40 V.-William Barnes Rhodes, 1772-1826. VI.—William Roscoe, 1753-1831... ... with portrait 50 VII.-Francis Baily, 1774-1844... VIII.-Barnard Barton, 1784-1849.... with portrait 61 IX.Samuel Rogers, 1763-1855.......with portrait 67 with portrait of Lord Avebury 79 XI.-Fitz-Greene Halleck, 1790-1867. with portraits 82 XII.-George Grote, 1794-1871.......with portrait 93 XIII.—Charles Sprague, 1791-1874... with portrait 96 XIV.—Walter Bagehot, 1826-1877.... with portrait 103 XV.-Edward Noyes Westcott, 1846-1898 XVII.-Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1833-1908 with portrait (frontispiece) 118 XVIII.-Lewis V. F. Randolph, 1838– SOME NOTABLE BANKERS IN Fiction. PAGE 1.-Balzac's Bankers 139 II.-Thackeray's Newcomes 147 III.-Bulwer's "Crawford” 150 IV.—Dickens's Bankers 152 V.—Dumas’ “Danglars” 158 VI.—Charles Reade's Story of “An Old Bank”... 160 VII.—The Rothschilds in Literature 172 VIII.-Miss Mulock's “Run on the Bank”... 186 IX.-A Meredith Creation 188 X.-Ibsen's “Helmer” 190 XI.–Stockton's “J. Weatherby Stull” 201 XII.-Paul Leicester Ford's "Mr. Blodgett" 207 XIII.--Westcott's “David Harum” 211 XIV.—Thomas Nelson Page's “Norman Wentworth” 214 XV.—John Law in “The Mississippi Bubble” 222 XVI.—Mrs. Ward's Country Banker 232 XVII.-F. Hopkinson Smith's "Peter" 235 CONCLUSION. The Ideal Banker 239 I PART I HISTORICAL SIDELIGHTS IF literature of banking, we must go back to the Chinese, with whom so many good things originated. The first known work on finance is "The Examination of Currency,” by the Chinese banker, Ma-twan-lin, published in 1321. In the highly poetical language of the Flowery Kingdom, bank notes were by him called “flying money.” Some of us still find the term singularly appropriate! Marco Polo, in the thirteenth century, and Sir John Mandeville, in the fourteenth, pioneers in the literature of travel, tell of the fiat money banker, Kublai Khan, showing that the autocrat of the East anticipated our modern fiatists by nearly seven centuries. Polo quaintly adds to his description: “Now you have heard the ways and means whereby the great Khan may have, and, in fact, has, more treasure than all the kings in the world.” Naturally enough, this fiat system of financing an empire and its emperor led to abuses. Mandeville, who followed Polo to Tartary, says: |