PREFACE. THE following chapters are reprinted, with some additions and corrections, from a weekly paper. Written at intervals, and necessarily disconnected, their only claim to attention is the comparative novelty of the subject. The world at large hears much less about trading than about fighting-men, though there seems no reason whatever why banking, for example, should not be quite as interesting a pursuit as battling. At any rate, it may be pleaded in favour of the "Stories of Banks and Bankers," that while scores of heavy volumes have been written about the dynasties of SchwarzburgSondershausen and Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, very little as yet is known about the no less important dynasties of Baring, Coutts, and Rothschild. F. M. |