Wisest, we must have an Aristocracy of Talent! cry many. True,
most true; but how to get it? The following extract from our
young friend of the _Houndsditch Indicator_ is worth perusing:
'At this time,' says he, 'while there is a cry everywhere,
articulate or inarticulate, for an "Aristocracy of Talent," a
Governing Class namely which did govern, not merely which took
the wages of governing, and could not with all our industry be
kept from misgoverning, corn-lawing, and playing the very deuce
with us,--it may not be altogether useless to remind some of the
greener-headed sort what a dreadfully difficult affair the
getting of such an Aristocracy is! Do you expect, my friends,
that your indispensable Aristocracy of Talent is to be enlisted
straightway, by some sort of recruitment aforethought, out of the
general population; arranged in supreme regimental order; and
set to rule over us? That it will be got sifted, like wheat out
of chaff, from the Twenty-seven Million British subjects; that
any Ballot-box, Reform Bill, or other Political Machine, with
Force of Public Opinion never so active on it, is likely to
perform said process of sifting? Would to Heaven that we had a
sieve; that we could so much as fancy any kind of sieve, wind-
fanners, or ne-plus-ultra of machinery, devisable by man, that
would do it!

'Done nevertheless, sure enough, it must be; it shall and will
be. We are rushing swiftly on the road to destruction; every
hour bringing us nearer, until it be, in some measure, done. The
doing of it is not doubtful; only the method and the costs! Nay
I will even mention to you an infallible sifting-process whereby
he that has ability will be sifted out to rule among us, and that
same blessed Aristocracy of Talent be verily, in an approximate