For five months the commissioners argued, waited to see if their respective countries would accede to the terms proposed, and finally settled an honorable peace. Then Clay, Adams, and Gallatin spent three months in London negotiating a treaty of commerce. Clay had meantime heard of the battle of New Orleans, and said, "Now I can go to England without mortification." In Paris he met Madame de Staël. "I have been in England," said she, "and have been battling for your cause there. They were so much enraged against you that at one time they thought seriously of sending the Duke of Wellington to lead their armies against you." "I am very sorry," replied Clay, "that they did not send the duke." "And why?" she asked. "Because if he had beaten us, we should have been in the condition of Europe, without disgrace. But if we had been so fortunate as to defeat him, we should have greatly added to the renown of our arms." When Clay returned to America, he was welcomed in New York and Lexington with public dinners. That the war had produced good results was well stated in his Lexington address. "Abroad, our character, which, at the time of its declaration, was in the lowest state of degradation, is raised to the highest point of elevation. It is impossible for any American to visit Europe without being sensible of this agreeable change in the personal attentions which he receives, in the praises which are bestowed on our past exertions, and the predictions which are made as to our future prospects. At home, a government, which, at its formation, was apprehended by its best friends, and pronounced by its enemies to be incapable of standing the shock, is found to answer all the purposes of its institution." Clay was now famous; commanding in presence, with a winsome rather than handsome face, exuberant in spirits, generous by nature, polite to the poorest, self-possessed, with a voice unsurpassed, if ever equalled, for its musical tone; a man who made friends everywhere and among all classes, and never lost them; who was always a gentleman, because always kind at heart. Manner, which Emerson calls the "finest of the fine arts," gave Clay the "mastery of palace and fortune" wherever he went. That voice and hand-grasp, that remembrance of a face and a name, won him countless admirers. President Madison offered him the mission to Russia, which he declined, as also a place in the Cabinet, as Secretary of War, preferring to speak on all those matters which helped to build up America. On the question of the United States Bank he made a strong speech against its constitutionality, which Andrew Jackson said later was his most convincing authority when he destroyed the bank. Clay's views changed in after years, and made him at bitter enmity with Andrew Jackson and John Tyler, both of whom vigorously opposed a bank, with its vast capital and consequent power in politics.