166. (O) "The great cities of to-day are not worse than great cities always have been," I do not remember having said that they were, my Lord; I have never anticipated for Manchester a worse fate than that of Sardis or Sodom; nor have I yet observed any so mighty works shown forth in her by her ministers, as to make her impenitence less pardonable than that of Sidon or Tyre. But I used the particular expression which your Lordship supposes me to have overcharged in righteous indignation, "a boil breaking forth with blains on man and beast," because that particular plague was the one which Moses was ordered, in the Eternal Wisdom, to connect with the ashes of the Furnace--literally, no less than spiritually, when he brought the Israelites forth out of Egypt, _from the midst of the Furnace of Iron_. How literally, no less than in faith and hope, the smoke of "the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt," has poisoned the earth, the waters, and the living creatures, flocks and herds, and the babes that know not their right hand from their left--neither Memphis, Gomorrah, nor Cahors are themselves likely to recognize: but, as I pause in front of the infinitude of the evil that I cannot find so much as thought to follow--how much less words to speak!--a letter is brought to me which gives what perhaps may be more impressive in its single and historical example, than all the general evidence gathered already in the pages of _Fors Clavigera_. * * * * * 167. "I could never understand formerly what you meant about usury, and about its being wrong to take interest. I said, truly, then that I 'trusted you,' meaning I knew that in such matters you did not 'opine'--and that innumerable things were within your horizon which had no place within mine. "But as I did not understand I could only watch and ponder. Gradually I came to see a little--as when I read current facts about India--about almost every country, and about our own trade, etc. Then (one of several circumstances that could be seen more closely) among my mother's kindred in the north, I watched the ruin of two lives. They began married life together, with good prospects and sufficient means, in a lovely little nest among the hills, beyond the Rochdale smoke. Soon this became too narrow. 'A splendid trade,' more mills, frequent changes into even finer dwellings, luxurious living, ostentation, extravagance, increasing year by year, all, as now appears, made possible by usury--borrowed capital. The wife was laid in her grave lately, and her friends are _thankful_. The husband, with ruin threatening his affairs, is in a worse, and living, grave of evil habits."