The signature of the Treaty of Peace with Great Britain, which fully established the independence of the United States, did not terminate the residence of Mr. Adams in Europe. He was ordered by Congress to remain there, and, in conjunction with Dr. Franklin and Mr. Jefferson, to establish by treaty commercial relations with foreign powers. And not long afterwards a new commission was sent him as the first representative of the nation to him who had been their King. The duties prescribed seemed likely to require a residence sufficiently long to authorize him in a request that Mrs. Adams should join him in Europe. After some hesitation, she finally consented; and, in June, 1784, she sailed from Boston in a merchant vessel bound to London. Mrs. Adams found herself, at the age of forty, suddenly transplanted into a scene wholly new. From a life of the utmost retirement, in a small and quiet country town of New England, she was at once transferred to the busy and bustling scenes of the populous and wealthy cities of Europe. Not only was her position novel to herself, but there had been nothing like it among her countrywomen. She was the first representative of her sex from the United States at the Court of Great Britain. The impressions made upon her mind were therefore received when it was uncommonly open, and free from the ordinary restraints which an established routine of precedents is apt to create. Her residence in France during the first year of her European experience appears to have been much enjoyed, notwithstanding the embarrassment felt by her from not speaking the language. That in England, which lasted three years, was somewhat affected by the temper of the sovereign. George and his Queen could not get over the mortification attending the loss of the American Colonies, nor at all times suppress the manifestation of it, when the presence of their Minister forced the subject on their recollection. Mrs. Adams went through the ordinary form of presentation at Court. She was not more than civilly met on the part of the Queen, whose subsequent conduct was hardly so good as on that occasion. Mrs. Adams appears never to have forgotten it; for at a much later period, when, in consequence of the French Revolution, the throne of England was thought to be in danger, she writes to her daughter with regret at the prospect for the country, but without sympathy for the Queen. "Humiliation for Charlotte," she says, "is no sorrow for me. She richly deserves her full portion for the contempt and scorn which she took pains to discover." Of course the courtiers followed the lead thus given to them, and the impression made against America at the very outset of its national career has hardly been effaced down to this day. It is to be observed, however, that one circumstance contributed to operate against the situation of the first American Minister to Great Britain, which has affected none of his successors.