The America arrived out early in July. Hitherto the dozen or more yacht clubs in the United Kingdom had never dreamed of foreign competition. It was just known that there was an Imperial Yacht Club of St. Petersburg, maintained to encourage a nautical spirit among the nobility; and that owners of yachts at Rotterdam had enrolled themselves as the "Royal Netherlands Yacht Club;" but, till the America appeared, the few who were aware of the fact that there was a flourishing club at New York did not regard it as of the slightest consequence, or as at all likely to interfere with their monopoly of the most useful of sports. The few trial runs the America made after her arrival proved she was possessed of great speed, and that the owners were not so little justified as at first they had been thought in offering to back an untried vessel against any yacht in the English waters for the large sum of £10,000. As the day of the Royal Squadron's grand match drew near, the entries became numerous. In the memory of man Cowes never presented such an appearance as on the 22d of August. A large portion of the peerage and gentry of the United Kingdom had left their residences, and forsaken the sports of the moors, to witness the struggle. There must have been a hundred yachts lying at anchor in the roads; the beach was crowded, from Egypt to the piers; the esplanade in front of the Club thronged with ladies and gentlemen, and with the people inland, who came over in shoals, with wives, sons, and daughters, for the day. Eighteen yachts entered as competitors; the largest of which was a three-mast schooner, the Brilliant, 392 tons; and the smallest a cutter, Volante, 48 tons. Nine of the yachts were of above 100 tons, and nine were of less than 100 tons. The America's burden is 170 tons. The umpire in the case was Earl Wilton, and the triumph of the America complete. The "Cup of All Nations" was presented to Commodore Stephens and his brother, the owners of the America, after a dinner in the club-house that night. Mr. Abbot Lawrence was present, and acknowledged the compliments paid to this country. The yacht has since been sold to an English gentleman,--to be a model for British naval architects. [Illustration: THE YACHT "AMERICA"] In the American section of the Great Exhibition, Mr. Hobbs has been the great centre of attraction, and his colloquial powers have been severely tested by the thousand and one explanations he is obliged to give of the mode in which his late achievements were effected. He contents himself with asserting the vulnerability of all British locks and the impregnability of his own. He looks on the picking of Chubb's locks as the smallest of his feats; and it appears that the Directors of the Bank of England (no bad judges in such matters), have given in their adhesion, by ordering several of Mr. Hobbs's patent locks.