ng its hands, asking
itself, nigh desperate, What farther? Reform Bill proves to be a
failure; Benthamee Radicalism, the gospel of 'Enlightened
Selfishness,' dies out, or dwindles into Five-point Chartism,
amid the tears and hootings of men: what next are we to hope or
try? Five-point Charter, Freetrade; Church-extension, Sliding-
scale; what, in Heaven's name, are we next to attempt, that we
sink not in inane Chimera, and be devoured of Chaos?--The case is
pressing, and one of the most complicated in the world. A God's-
message never came to thicker-skinned people; never had a God's-
message to pierce through thicker integuments, into heavier ears.
It is Fact, speaking once more, in miraculous thunder-voice, from
out of the centre of the world;--how unknown its language to the
deaf and foolish many; how distinct, undeniable, terrible and
yet beneficent, to the hearing few: Behold, ye shall grow wiser,
or ye shall die! Truer to Nature's Fact, or inane Chimera will
swallow you; in whirlwinds of fire, you and your Mammonisms,
Dilettantisms, your Midas-eared philosophies, double-barreled
Aristocracies, shall disappear!--Such is the God's-message to
_us,_ once more; in these modern days.

We must have more Wisdom to govern us, we must be governed by the
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 He