is, however, the least of
his defects. If he could not speak at all, his audience would have
reason for self-congratulation. We might, too, forget that he is an
obese, round-shouldered, short-necked, and eminently beery HAMLET, with
a tendency to speak through his nose. But how can we overlook his
incapacity to express the subtle changes of HAMLET'S ever questioning
mind? One of his admirers has recently quoted RUSKIN in his support. MR.
FECHTER gives no heed to RUSKIN'S axiom, that all true art is delicate
art. There is no delicacy in his conception of HAMLET. True, he is
impulsive and sensitive; but this is due to his physical and not to his
mental organization. A HAMLET without delicacy is quite as intolerable a
spectacle as a _Grande Duchesse_ without decency.

What, then, has given him his reputation? The answer is evident;--His
yellow wig. NAPOLEON gilded the dome of the _Invalides_, and the
Parisians forgot to murmur at the arbitrary acts of his reign. Mr.
FECHTER crowns himself with a golden wig, and the public forgets to
murmur at the five acts of his HAMLET.

In all other respects Mr. FECHTER'S HAMLET is inferior to that of his
rival Mr. FOX. It is not nearly as funny, and it is much less
impressive. Both actors are wrong, however, in not omitting the
graveyard scene. To make a burlesque of Death is to unlawfully invade
the province of Messrs. BEECHER and FROTHINGHAM.

The popularity of Mr. FECHTER is only a new proof of the potency of
yellow hair. It is the yellow hair of the British blonde, joined to that
kindliness of disposition with which--like a personification of
Charity--she "bareth all things," that makes her a thing of beauty in
the eyes of R.G.W., and a joy for as many seasons as her hair will keep
its color. It is because Mr. FECHTER decided that the hair presumptive
of the Royal Dane must have been yellow, that his name has grown famous
in England.

The veracious chronicler relates that, on one occasion, Mr. VENUS
deprived his literary friend with a wooden leg of that useful appendage.
But that act of constructive mayhem did not destroy Mr. WEGG'S literary
reputation. Can MR. FECHTER'S HAMLET endure an analogous test? If he has
confidence in himself, let him try it. He has gone to BOSTON for a
change of air. When he returns to NEW-YORK, let it be for a change of
hair. When he succeeds in drawing full houses to see him play HAMLET
with raven curls, we shall believe that he is something more tha