NEVER did a nation, in its resistance to an iron-handed, remorseless despotism, and its heroic struggles for freedom and even existence, licit such a world-wide sympathy as did gallant Hungary, in her bloody but unsuccessful contest with the combined forces of Austria and Russia. The entire mass of the yeomanry of England were deeply moved the populace of Rome, and Naples, and Germany, and France, and even Turkey, watched the fearful and unequal struggle with intense interest; and from end to end of our Union, uprose a prayer for her deliverance, from every heart that could appreciate deeds of gallant daring, or abhor the brute, iniquitous, and cruel heartlessness that crushed her to the earth.

Judging from the wide-spread prevalence of this sympathy, particularly in the American heart, we have thought that no subject could be more acceptable to our numerous readers, than a description, in a series of articles, of the main incidents of the Hungarian contest, accompanied by engravings of some of the places most noted in that struggle. We therefore insert in the present number, a beautiful view of Buda and Pesth, with the majestic Danube rolling between them. In the foreground of the hill, on which the castle of Buda stands, just in the rear of the shrubbery, which appears on the brow of that hill, is the house where the patriot Kossuth lived: which fact

alone will give greater interest to the embellishments. A more minute description of those two cities, with the various thrilling incidents which occurred in and around them, will be given in future numbers.

As a holiday present to our numerous readers, and particularly to the younger portion of them, we insert in an extra embellishment, a picturesque and romantic view of the celebrated "Fountain at Wilhelmshöhe," near Cassel.

ALL the poets are indebted more or less to those who have gone before them; even Homer's originality has been questioned, and Virgil owes almost as much to Theocritus, in his Pastorals, as to Homer, in his Heroics; if the illustrious Milton has soared above both Homer and Virgil, it is because he has stolen some feathers from their wings. Shakspeare stands alone. His want of erudition was a most happy and productive ignorance; it forced him back upon his own resources, which were exhaustless. If his literary qualifications made it impossible for him to borrow from the ancients, he was more than repaid by the powers of his invention, which made borrowing unnecessary. In all the ebbings and flowings of his genius in his storms no less than in his calms, he is as completely separated from all other poets, as the Caspian from all other seas. He abounds with so many axioms applicable to all the circumstances, situations, and varieties of life, that they are no longer the property of the poet, but of the world; all apply, but none dare appropriate them; and, like anchors, they are secure from thieves, by reason of their weight.

Memory is the friend of wit, but the treacherous ally of invention; there are many books that owe their success to two things—the good memory of those who write them, and the bad memory of those who read them.