rce lives and thrives. If it be a building speculation, the
architecture is but the background of a brilliant "mall," where splendid
equipages and caracoling riders figure, with gay parasols and sleek
poodles intermixed.

One "buys in" to these stocks with feelings far above "five percent."
A sense of the happiness diffused amongst thousands of our
fellow-creatures--the "blessings of civilization," as we like to call
the extension of cotton prints--cheer and animate us; and while laying
out our money advantageously, we are crediting our hearts with a
large balance on the score of philanthropy. To foster this commendable
tendency, to feed the tastes of those who love, so to say, to "shoot at
Fortune with both barrels," an order of men arose, cunning in all the
devices of advertisement, learned in the skill of capitals, and adroit
in illustrations.

Of these was Mr. Hankes. Originally brought up at the feet of George
Robins, he was imported into Ireland by Mr. Davenport Dunn as his chief
man at business,--the Grand Vizier of Joint Stock Companies and all
industrial speculations.

If Dr. Pangloss was a good man for knowing what wickedness was, Mr.
Hankes might equally pretend to skill in all enterprises, since he had
experienced, for a number of years, every species of failure and
defeat The description of his residences would fill half a column of a
newspaper. They ranged from Brompton to Boulogne, and took in everything
from Wilton Crescent to St John's Wood. He had done a little of
everything, too, from "Chief Commissioner to the Isthmus"--we never
heard of what isthmus--to Parliamentary Agent for the friends of Jewish
emancipation. With a quickness that rarely deceived him, Dunn saw his
capabilities. He regarded him as fighting fortune so bravely with all
the odds against him, that he ventured to calculate what such a man
might be, if favorably placed in the world. The fellow who could bring
down his bird with a battered old flint musket might reasonably enough
distinguish himself if armed with an Enfield rifle. The venture was not,
however, entirely successful; for though Hankes proved himself a very
clever fellow, he was only really great under difficulties. It was
with the crash of falling fortunes around him--amidst debt, bankruptcy,
executions, writs, and arrests--Hankes rose above his fellows, and
displayed all the varied resources of his fertile genius. The Spartan
vigor of his mind assorted but badly with pr