The foreign affairs of the United States having assumed an important aspect, Mr Adams was appointed a Commissioner to France in the place of Silas Deane, who had been recalled. This appointment took place on the 28th of November, 1777, and in the following February he embarked from Boston. After a long and disagreeable passage of fortyfive days he arrived in France. Here he devoted himself to the duties of his mission, in conjunction with his colleagues, till Dr Franklin was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of France, and the commission was dissolved. Having no longer any charge to execute in Europe, Mr Adams left Paris on the 8th of March, 1779, for Nantes, where he proposed to embark for his own country. Various accidents and unexpected causes of delay kept him there till the 14th of June, when he sailed in the French frigate, the Sensible, in company with M. de la Luzerne, who was coming to the United States in the character of Minister Plenipotentiary, as successor to M. Gerard. The French government had voluntarily proffered to Mr Adams a passage in this vessel, after his disappointment in not sailing in the American frigate Alliance, as he at first expected. The Sensible arrived in Boston on the 3d of August. But he was not long allowed to remain a spectator only of public events. On the 27th of September he was again chosen by Congress to represent his country abroad, as Minister Plenipotentiary for negotiating a treaty of peace and a treaty of commerce with Great Britain, when that nation should be found in a humor to recognise the independence of the United States, and enter into bonds of friendship. A task more honorable, momentous, and difficult could not have awaited him, nor one bearing more emphatical testimony of the confidence of his countrymen in his wisdom, abilities, integrity, and patriotism. On this second mission he sailed in the same frigate, which had brought him from France; accommodations for this purpose having been offered to Congress by the French Minister in Philadelphia. The vessel sprang a leak on the passage, and the captain was obliged to put into Ferrol, in Spain, where he arrived on the 8th of December. From this place, that he might avoid further hazards and uncertainty of a sea voyage in the depth of winter, Mr Adams resolved to proceed by land to the point of his destination. He reached Paris on the 9th of February, 1780. The extreme badness of the travelling at this season had detained him nearly two months on the road.