replied with dignity, but not without some manifestations of excitement:-- "The circumstances of this audience are so extraordinary, the language you have now held is so extremely proper, and the feelings you have discovered so justly adapted to the occasion, that I must say that I not only receive with pleasure the assurances of the friendly disposition of the People of the United States, but I am very glad the choice has fallen upon you to be their Minister.

I wish you, sir, to believe, and that it may be understood in America, that I have done nothing in the late contest, but what I thought myself indispensably bound to do, by the duty which I owed my people.

I will be frank with you--I was the last to conform to the separation, but the separation having been made, and having become inevitable, I have always said, as I say now, that I would be the first to meet the friendship of the United States, as an independent power.
"The moment I see such sentiments and language as yours prevail, and a disposition to give this country the preference, that moment I shall say, let the circumstances of language, religion and blood have their natural and full effect." The kindly feelings expressed by the King, were, however, comparatively, only the language of ceremony, for the British Ministry, and the British people, did not regard the new republic with favor.

But they could not withhold the exhibition of reluctant respect.
It was at such a time as this, and in such circumstances, that John Quincy Adams surveyed, from a new position, the colossal structure of British power, and the workings of its combined systems of conservative aristocracy, and progressive democracy.

It was here that he imbibed new veneration for Russell, Sidney, Hampden, and Milton, its republican patriots; for Shakspeare, Dryden, and Pope, its immortal poets; and for Addison and Johnson, its moralists; here he learned from Wilberforce the principles of political philanthropy, as well as the patience and perseverance to defend them, and studied eloquence by the living models of Pitt, Fox, Erskine, Burke, and Sheridan.
This, indeed, was a fitting conclusion to a precocious education by the patriots and philosophers of his own country, with practical observations in the courts of Spain and the Netherlands, of the weak but amiable Louis XVI., and the accomplished, but depraved, Catharine II.
John Quincy Adams now became fearful that the duties of manhood would devolve upon him without his having completed the necessary academic studies.