“Now I will try to answer your questions of law about Usury. There is no such thing as usury in law at all,—that is to say, there is no rate of interest above which the lending of money is criminal or unlawful. By the 17 and 18 Vict., c. 90, (passed in 1854,) “all existing laws against usury shall be repealed.” (Caps. mine.) There are a great many cases where courts of law interfere in bargains which seem to them unfair or unreasonable. But they all arise out of the special relations of the parties, and it would take a volume to tell you what these may be. For more than twenty years, as I suppose every one knows who reads a newspaper, there has been known to the law no lawful rate of interest which it is punishable to exceed. I cannot imagine for what end you ask me the question. Lawyers do not make the law, be it good or bad; they follow it like policemen or soldiers who obey orders. “I reserve what else I have to say. I am sure all that you write to me comes from you in the most friendly feeling, as believe me does from me all that I write to you. Your Fors fills me with melancholy each time I read it. For it reminds me how many of those to whom we might look to bring more order, patience, and faith into the world, are occupied in setting us against one another, in making us rebels against our fathers, and all that they have done for us and taught us. “Ever gratefully and most sincerely yours, “Frederic Harrison.” a. I believe there is no other friend, with whom I have had so brief opportunity of intercourse, whom I like so much as I do Mr. Harrison. What reproach this sentence is to me as an artist, I must submit to silently. b. To ‘revile’ means, in accurate English, to vilify under the influence of passion. It is not an expression which my friend could have used, except thoughtlessly, of any words of mine, uttered of any person living. c. I do not ‘believe,’—I know, that the entire system of modern life is thus corrupted. But I have long learned to believe in God, without expecting Him to manage everything as I think proper; and I have no occasion for belief in effort, so long as I know the duty of it. d. Where, and when? e. The only word I have applied to Comte, in my whole letter, is “unique.” For the justice of which epithet I trusted my friend’s report of him. I have never read a word he has written,—never heard anything about him that interested me,—and never represented, or misrepresented, him, in any manner whatsoever. When I said ‘physiologists,’ I meant physiologists; and no more thought of Comte than of Adam.