The poor frog has also been accused of this preposterous mimicry; but it is only a single case, much at war with our knowledge of this apparently unambitious quadruped or reptile, (I am not naturalist enough to know which to call it)--much at war, too, with the chivalric principles of attacking none incapable of self-defence; and _moreover_, it is related by a professed inventor of fables, with whose professional license of fibbing we have all been familiar from our childhood, and are therefore prepared to estimate at its true value. I allude, as you must suppose, to our school-boy tale, wherein it is asserted (believe it who can) that a poor frog, demented by vanity, burst himself open, and of course perished, in his impracticable efforts to swell himself to the unattainable size of the portly ox. Why this far-fetched and incredible story should ever have been invented for illustrating a matter of frequent occurrence among ourselves, I never could well understand. The constant puffings and swellings-out of thousands and tens of thousands of our own class, to attain dimensions which nothing but gum-elastic minds and bodies, or something still more expansive, could qualify them to attain, are quite sufficient, manifest, and ridiculous, to render useless all resort to the invention of fabulous tales--all appeal to the imagined follies and gratuitously assumed vices of brute-beasts, reptiles and insects, for the laudable purpose of proving that man himself is no better than a brute in many of his propensities and habits. As to his particular folly of trying to change himself into something which he never can be, why should fabulists or any others attempt to drag the poor monkeys, frogs, and other animals into such a co-partnery, without a solitary authenticated fact to warrant the imputation, when innumerable facts are daily occurring among ourselves, to satisfy even the most sceptical, both in regard to the indigenous growth of this folly, and of man's exclusive right to it. The Would Be's, in fact, are to be seen almost in every place, and in all the walks of life; but especially in villages, towns, cities, and at medicinal springs, for in these the chances of attracting notice being generally proportioned to the population, there will always be more notice-seekers--in other words, more Would Be's than elsewhere.