John Quincy Adams's long career is unique in American history. At the age of eleven he accompanied his father on a diplomatic mission to Europe, and early acquired a knowledge of French and German. When barely fourteen he went to St. Petersburg as private secretary to the American Minister, Dana. At sixteen Adams served as one of the secretaries of the American Plenipotentiaries during the negotiations resulting in the treaty of peace and independence of 1783. At the age of twenty-seven he was appointed Minister to Holland by President Washington, and afterward was Minister to Berlin and Commissioner to Sweden. After serving for some years in the United States Senate he was sent, in 1809, as Minister to Russia, where he remained till 1815. Then he was transferred to London, where he resided till 1817, when he became Secretary of State. His career as President of the United States and his subsequent Congressional life was honorable in the extreme. Yet Adams's biographer, Morse, has aptly said: "Never did a man of pure life and just purposes have fewer friends or more enemies.... If he could ever have gathered even a small personal following, his character and abilities would have insured him a brilliant and prolonged success; but for a man of his calibre and influence, we see him as one of the most lonely and desolate of the great men of history." [Sidenote: James Russell Lowell] During this year James Russell Lowell published his "Bigelow Papers," a humorous satire on the Mexican war in Yankee dialect, the "Indian Summer Reverie," and "A Fable for Critics." [Sidenote: Death of Donizetti] [Sidenote: Early operas] [Sidenote: Prolific compositions]