The manufacture of a London watch or piano will employ, each, at least twenty trades, exclusive of the preparers, importers, and venders of the raw material used in these articles; every one of these tradesmen shall be nay, _must_ be, the best of their class, or at least the best that can be obtained; and for this purpose, the inducements of high wages are held out to workmen generally, and their competition for employment enables the manufacturer to secure the most skilful. It is just the same with a broken-down constitution, or a lawsuit: the former shall be placed under the care of a lung-doctor, a liver-doctor, a heart-doctor, a dropsy-doctor, or whatever other doctor is supposed best able to understand the case; each of these doctors shall have read lectures and published books, and made himself known for his study and exclusive attention to one of the "thousand ills that flesh is heir to:" the latter shall go through the hands of dozens of men skilful in that branch of the law connected with the particular injury. So it is with every thing else of production, mechanical or intellectual, or both, that London affords: the extent of the market permits the minute division of labour, and the minute division of labour reacts upon the market, raising the price of its produce, and branding it with the signs of a legitimate superiority.
Hence the superior intelligence of working men, of all classes, high and low, in the World of London; hence that striving after excellence, that never-ceasing tendency to advance in whatever they are engaged in, that so distinguishes the people of this wonderful place; hence the improvements of to-day superseded by the improvements of to-morrow; hence speculation, enterprize, unknown to the inhabitants of less extended spheres of action.
Competition, emulation, and high wages give us an aristocracy of talent, genius, skill, _tact_, or whatever you like to call it; but you are by no means to understand that any of these aristocracies, or better classes, stand prominently before their fellows _socially_, or, that one is run after in preference to another; nobody runs after anybody in the World of London.
In this respect, no capital, no country on the face of the earth, resembles us; every where else you will find a leading class, giving a tone to society, and moulding it in some one or other direction; a predominating _set_, the pride of those who are _in_, the envy of those who are _below_ it. There is nothing of this kind in London; here every man has his own set, and every man his proper pride. In every set, social or professional, there are great names, successful men, prominent; but the set is nothing the greater for them: no man sheds any lustre upon his fellows, nor is a briefless barrister a whit more thought of because he and Lyndhurst are of the same profession.