London overflows with talent. You may compare it, for the purpose of illustration, to one of George Robins' patent filters, into which pours turbid torrents of Thames water, its sediment, mud, dirt, weeds, and rottenness; straining through the various _strata_, its grosser particles are arrested in their course, and nothing that is not pure, transparent, and limpid is transmitted. In the great filter of London life, conceit, pretension, small provincial abilities, _pseudo_-talent, _soi-disant_ intellect, are tried, rejected, and flung out again. True genius is tested by judgment, fastidiousness, emulation, difficulty, privation; and, passing through many ordeals, persevering, makes its way through all; and at length, in the fulness of time, flows forth, in acknowledged purity and refinement, upon the town. There is a perpetual onward, upward tendency in the talent, both high and low, mechanical and intellectual, that abounds in London: "Emulation hath a thousand sons," who are ever and always following fast upon your heels. There is no time to dawdle or linger on the road, no "stop and go on again:" if you but step aside to fasten your shoe-tie, your place is occupied--you are edged off, pushed out of the main current, and condemned to circle slowly in the lazy eddy of some complimenting clique. Thousands are to be found, anxious and able to take your place; while hardly one misses you, or turns his head to look after you should you lose your own: you _live_ but while you _labour_, and are no longer remembered than while you are reluctant to repose. Talent of all kinds brings forth perfect fruits, only when concentrated upon one object: no matter how versatile men may be, mankind has a wise and salutary prejudice against diffused talent; for although _knowledge_ diffused immortalizes itself, diffused _talent_ is but a shallow pool, glittering in the noonday sun, and soon evaporated; _concentrated_, it is a well, from whose depths perpetually may we draw the limpid waters. Therefore is the talent of London concentrated, and the division of labour minute. When we talk of a lawyer, a doctor, a man of letters, in a provincial place, we recognize at once a man who embraces all that his opportunities present him with, in whatever department of his profession. The lawyer is, at one and the same time, advocate, chamber counsel, conveyancer, pleader; the doctor an accoucheur, apothecary, physician, surgeon, dentist, or at least, in a greater or less degree, unites in his own person, these--in London, distinct and separate--professions, according as his sphere of action is narrow or extended; the country journalist is sometimes proprietor, editor, sub-editor, traveller, and canvasser, or two or more of these heterogeneous and incompatible avocations. The result is, an obvious, appreciable, and long-established superiority in that product which is the result of minutely divided labour.