remarkable for his obtuse perversity in
running at a gate: it is all the same to Bull
should the gate happen to be a railway one,
with an express tram passing  in front of it, at
the rate of sixty miles an hour. In a parity
of perverseness the ecclesiastical Bullfrog
endeavours In pulH he poor twopenny wax taper,
anent which, with its attendant candlestick
there is such a terrible pother between him
and his bishop, into the dimensions of that
famous candle which Latimer told good
master Ridley should never be extinguished
in England. But it will not do Bullfrog.
We know which is the twopenny taper and
which the church candle. You may preach
in a surplice, a shirt over your clothes, like a
Whiteboy, a smock-frock, a flour-sack, or a
harlequin's jacket, if you like; you may
make such reverences and gyrations before
carved screens and ornamental brass-work
as may warrant your being mistaken for
my friend Saltimbanquo tumbling over head
and ears in the booth yonder; you may
wear your hair parted in the middle, behind,
before, or twisted into a tail, after the
Chinese fashion; you may mortify yourself
with fasts, macerations, vigils, and disciplines,
till you become as emaciated as Jean Baptiste
Whatshianame, the living skeleton (a dead
skeleton now, I opine); you may publish
whole libraries of controversial portmanteaus,
bandboxes, and Cheshire cheese wrappers,
but you shall not ride over me, Bullfrog.

I am a free-born Briton (I think I observed
that before) and I hate cant—which is Bullfrog.
Also arrogance. Which is Bullfrog.
Also the conceited puffery and exaggeration
of ridiculous aud offensive ceremonies into
rules of faith and conduct. Bullfrog again.
If I am to be a religious Briton let me have
by all means as much faith, hope, and charity
as possible; but don't tell me that there is
any faith, or hope, or charity in the Reverend
Bullfrog bribing the blackguard, "little Froggees,"
to pelt his rivals—the billstickers—
with rotten eggs, on a disputed question
of churchwardens and candlesticks.

You had better paint, Bullfrog. No free-born
Briton in this favoured island would be
happier than I would be to recognise and
admire a good, a great picture from your
pencil. And though I denounce you by times,
as an imitator, I would in no case decry
imitation in art where imitation is associated
with study, with appreciation, with progress.
Copy, follow, dwell upon those grand old
masters of the Loggie and Stanze, whose
footsteps echo through the corridors of Time.
Pin your faith upon a Giotto or a Cimabue.
Cry with Gainsborough that you are going to
heaven, and that Vandyke is of the company;
paraphrase Erasmus, and say, "Sancte
Rafaelle, orate pro nobis;" be a disciple, and
a passionate one, of the colourists of Venice,
the draughtsmen of Florence, and the thinkers
of Rome. Do this, Bullfrog, and I will
immediately change my name from Muggins to
Maecenas, and give you commissions for
canvases fifty feet by twenty, the painting of which
shall last you life long, and make you a
millionnaire. But you can't do it, Bullfrog.
Here are two or three good and true young
men. Scholars, enthusiasts, thinkers;
indefatigable in study, triumphant in performance.
They paint pictures in which the subtle delicacy
of thought and poetical feeling, arms itself
against the world in the chain-mail of
reality. Because these painters depict with minute
fidelity the minutest accessories to the story
they tell; because they conquer the
manipulated representation, of the mortar between
the bricks, the reticulations of the leaves, the
bloom on the petals of the flowers, the ruddle
on the sheep, the pores of the flesh, the
reflection of the face in the glass and the form in
the water; therefore Bullfrog, who thinks he
had better paint and be a brother too, perches
himself on the topmost peak of the easel,
and begins to swell and croak for brotherhood.
"Let us have the B. B. B., the Beauty
in Bricks Brotherhood," says Bullfrog. No
more aerial perspective, no more middle
distance, no more drawing from the antique,
no more classical landscape; have we not the
bricks in the workhouse-wall opposite, to
study from? Are they not real? Go for
reality. Go for a basket of sprats with every
osier in the basket and every scale on the
sprats, because the basket is a basket,
and the sprats are sprats. Go for bad
drawing, because you cannot draw; for grimy
colour, because a factory chimney is grimy; for
violently inharmonious colour, because a
yellow bonnet with scarlet poppies in it,
though producing a violent and inharmonious
effect, is real. Go for ugliness, because ugliness
is oftentimes terribly real, aud because
you cannot depict beauty. Reality is ugly
(sometimes) and must be faithfully rendered
for the honour and glory of the B. B. B.,
certainly. A laystall is ugly; a wretched,
ragged, untaught, street Arab boy is ugly; but
you, miserable Bullfrog, can you paint, can
you even understand, the beauties of the gold
and silver skies, the leafy woods, the spangled
and jewelled fields, the sounding sea?

It is because I wish the character of Bullfrog
to be thoroughly known (with a view to
his being as thoroughly exposed and ultimately
demolished) that I now call attention from
his mischievous imitative foolery to his more
mischievous imitative roguery. It is the
delight of this reptile friend of mine to
foist delusions on the public mind; to
pass off brainless impostors for transcendant
geniuses; to exaggerate back-stairs scanmaggery
into grave conspiracies; to set ignorance
and impudence and conceit, side by side with
wit and learning and pathos; to persuade
Pennywhistle that the eyes of Europe are
upon him; to tell Earthworm that forty
centuries look down upon him from the
pyramids; to elevate the Three Tailors of Tooley
Street into the people of England.