The friendship of Washington and Lafayette deserves more than passing mention. It constitutes a memorable part in the life of each. Already we have witnessed its beginning. They saw each other for the last time at Annapolis, where Washington had taken his welcome guest in his carriage from Mount Vernon. There they parted, Washington returning to his peaceful home, Lafayette hastening across the ocean to the great destinies and the great misfortunes which awaited him. But before leaving our shores he wrote a letter from his ship, where he pours out his devotion to his great chief, calling him “the most beloved of all friends he ever had or ever shall have anywhere,” declaring his regret that he cannot have “the inexpressible pleasure of embracing him in his own house, of welcoming him in a family where his name is adored,” and to this adding: “Everything that admiration, respect, gratitude, friendship, and filial love can inspire is combined in my affectionate heart to devote me most tenderly to you. In your friendship I find a delight which words cannot express.”[82] Though never meeting again, their intimacy was prolonged by an interchange of letters, the most remarkable of any in the life of either, by which their friendship is made one, and each lives doubly in the affection of the other. Returned to Europe, Lafayette sought constant opportunities to promote our interests,--writing especially of Jefferson, our Minister at Paris, that he was “happy to be his aide-de-camp.”[83] Nor did he confine his exertions to France. Traversing Germany, from Brunswick to Vienna, he was everywhere a welcome guest, first with the Emperor, and then with the King of Prussia, who was the famous Frederick, sometimes called the Great,--described by Lafayette, in a picture worthy of a Dutch artist, as “an old, decrepit, and dirty corporal, all covered with Spanish snuff, the head almost resting on one shoulder, and fingers almost dislocated by the gout.”[84] Cornwallis of Yorktown, who was there as a visitor also, confessed that at the camp in Silesia “there was a most marked preference for Lafayette.”[85] But wherever the hero appeared, our concerns, whether political or commercial, were still present to his thoughts. At the table of Frederick he vindicated American institutions, and especially answered doubts with regard to “the strength of the Union,” which he upheld always as a fundamental condition of national prosperity. He confidently looked to our Independence as the fruitful parent of a new order of ages, being that rightful self-government, above all hereditary power, whether of kings or nobles, which he proudly called the “American Era.”