Young America, now at the budding period of her sweet sixteen, was, with her personal charms, her ample landed dower, and her ampler future expectations, a damsel well worth the keenest and best efforts of the two European rivals. France, besides being fired with the desire of getting possession of the large commissions likely to accrue from the handling her handsome estate, was anxious to make her Roman Catholic. For one hundred years she had been endeavoring to persuade the young girl to take from herself and place around her fair neck a rosary, among whose beads, at regular intervals, were interspersed some larger than the others wrought into shapes of cannon, swivels, little forts, and stockades. England, ever looking after rich wards in chancery, with solid, landed cares, requiring a guardian, had as assiduously sought to gain the custody, and even to win the hand of the fresh and rosy American. She had not failed to observe the long and carefully made rosary, and had sought several times angrily to tear it off her neck with a glaived hand, and had more than once instigated the Iroquois to cut the shining chain at Lakes Champlain and Erie and on the Monongahela, and to scatter the metallic beads. She had also sent emissaries from the seaboard westward, bearing Protestant school-houses and churches, mission-houses, traders’ articles, and Saxon notions, to barter and exchange for the coveted rosary. Each of the suitors, it was evident, was more intent upon the maiden’s fortune than her affections, more concerned about her lots than her lot. It was also abundantly manifest that the long-standing feuds and contentions over her possession and custody must at last and forever be decided. The fight for the championship for the belt of America could no longer be postponed. John Bull, bluff, beef-fed, plucky, and long-winded, weighing forty stone, stepped into the ring, tossed his tarpaulin to the centre, and having tipped off a bottle of Bass’s double XX, challenged Johnny Crapeau to fight it out for the lass. The Frenchman stripped at once for the fight, and with a nimble courtesy, thinly concealing his disdain, glided within the ropes which now surrounded the champions of Europe. Into the middle of the ring the belt was thrown. It was embroidered with Indian bead-work at one end and with beautifully wrought and valuable cotton fringes at the other, while picturesque figures of forest, lake, and plain set off the centre, and precious jewels and costly stones glittered all along either edge. For nine years that great and deadly boxing-match lasted. Why should we dwell upon it in detail? The world’s reporters were there, and have given full and accurate accounts, which have been read everywhere, except in France, with animated interest. Most briefly, however, we may summarize the contest.