The chief quality of a caricature seems to be _disproportion_--an unfitness of parts to each other. Simple exaggeration does not suffice to produce the effect desired, for if all the details of the picture be equally exaggerated, it may present a disagreeable likeness, but it does not produce that deep sense of the ridiculous which arises from an incongruous classification of the details. This rule is perhaps better tested than any other, by the _reductio ad absurdum_, and it is well illustrated by those extravagant French prints, in which heads of enormous comparative dimensions are placed upon bodies and limbs ridiculously diminutive, the effect of the disproportion being heightened by the accessaries of dress, &c. This is perhaps the most extravagant kind of caricature, but it requires far less skill than those sketches in which the more minute incongruities of features, form and costume, are resorted to. These sometimes exhibit much graphic ability, and it is a curious fact, that in pictures of this kind, where every feature is distorted, the strongest likenesses are sometimes preserved.[2] It is _truth_ presented through the medium of the ludicrous. Like the burlesque in writing, which exhibits an argument even more forcibly, because it presents the whole matter in a ridiculous light. But I am forgetting my story. [Footnote 2: Some striking examples of this have been produced by the French caricaturists, who, though far inferior to their English brethren in broad humor, excel them in the subtilty of their conceptions. I remember a series of prints representing Charles X and his ministers, in the forms of various beasts. The king was personated by the _Giraffe_, then exhibiting at the _Jardin des plantes_ in Paris--the ministers by other animals, whose instinctive qualities were intended to represent the several characteristics of those dignitaries. For instance, as well as I remember, the Fox played Prince Polignac, the Wolf, Count Peyronnet, &c. to indicate the cunning and rapacity of those ministers. The accuracy of the likenesses in those prints was remarkable. I believe Louis Phillippe and his ministers have more recently been shewn up in a similar manner.] I had not seen Fenella for several days, when passing along St. Paul street one morning, I met an acquaintance, who accosted me with, "Bless me, Pertinax, where have you been so long? I was last evening at Fenella's, and she actually hinted a suspicion of your defection from her cause." "Why to tell you the truth Nichols, I have absented myself with _malice prepense_." "She is of that opinion, and takes it unkindly of you, that while she is suffering so much vexation, you of all others, who neither flatter nor make love to her, should prove recreant." "Vexation! what do you mean?" "Come, come, you will not pretend that you know of nothing which should annoy her, when the cause of her annoyance is the talk of the whole town."