"Your letter of the twenty-third has made me the happiest man upon earth. I am twenty years younger than I was yesterday. It is a cruel mortification to me that I cannot go to meet you in London; but there are a variety of reasons decisively against it, which I will communicate to you here. Meantime I send you a son, who is one of the greatest travellers of his age, and without partiality, I think as promising and manly a youth, as is in the whole world. He will purchase a coach, in which we four must travel to Paris; let it be large and strong. After spending a week or two here you will have to set out with me for France, but there are no seas between; a good road, a fine season, and we will make moderate journeys, and see the curiosities of several cities in our way,--Utrecht, Breda, Antwerp, Brussels, &c. &c. It is the first time in Europe that I looked forward to a journey with pleasure. Now I expect a great deal. I think myself made for this world." John Quincy Adams reached London the thirtieth of July. "When he entered," says Mrs. Adams, "we had so many strangers that I drew back, not really believing my eyes, till he cried out, 'O my mamma, and my dear sister!' Nothing but the eyes appeared what he once was. His appearance is that of a man, and in his countenance the most perfect good-humor. His conversation by no means denies his station. I think you do not approve the word _feelings_. I know not what to substitute in lieu, nor how to describe mine." The son was then seventeen, and the separation had continued nearly five years. Notwithstanding that the husband's letter had forbidden hope of his participating in this re-union, he did so after all, practising a surprise charmingly delicate and gallant. It was a blissful meeting not only of happy friends, but of merit and reward, a beautiful and honorable consummation of mutual sacrifices and toils. Seldom does the cup of joy so effervesce. Independence predicted in youth, moved and sustained with unrivalled eloquence in manhood, at home--confirmed and consolidated by loans, alliances, ships, and troops--obtained, in part or all, by him, abroad--Washington nominated Chief of the army--the American Navy created--peace negotiated--this, this (if civic virtues and achievments were honored only equally with martial) would have been the circle of Golden Medals, which John Adams might have laid at the feet of his admirable wife! Five months after this, as if too full for earlier utterance, she wrote to her sister: "You will chide me, perhaps, for not relating to you an event which took place in London, that of unexpectedly meeting my long absent friend; for from his letters by my son, I had no idea that he would come. But you know, my dear sister, that poets and painters wisely draw a veil over scenes which surpass the pen of the one and the pencil of the other."