Washington was not much given to professions of friendship, nor was he one of the great men who keep a circle of intimates and sometimes of flatterers about them. He was extremely independent of the world and perfectly self-sufficing, but it is a mistake to suppose that because he unbosomed himself to scarcely any one, and had the loneliness of greatness and of high responsibilities, he was therefore without friends. He had as many friends as usually fall to the lot of any man; and although he laid bare his inmost heart to none, some were very close and all were very dear to him. In war and politics, as has already been said, the two men who came nearest to him were Hamilton and Knox, and his diary shows that when he was President he consulted with them nearly every day wholly apart from the regular cabinet meetings. They were the two advisers who were friends as well as secretaries, and who followed and sustained him as a matter of affection as much as politics. At home his neighbor, George Mason, although they came to differ, was a strong friend whom he liked and respected, and whose opinion, whether favorable or adverse, he always sought. His feeling to Patrick Henry was much deeper than mere political or official acquaintance, and the lovable qualities of the brilliant orator, clear even now across the gulf of a century, were evidently strongly felt by Washington. They differed about the Constitution, but Washington was eager at a later day to have Henry by his side in the cabinet, and in the last years they stood shoulder to shoulder in defense of the Union with a personal sympathy deeper than any born of a mere similarity of opinion. Henry Lee, the son of his old sweetheart, he loved with a tender and peculiar affection. He watched over him and helped him, rejoiced in the dashing gallantry which made him famous as Light-horse Harry, and, when he had won civil as well as military distinction, trusted him and counseled with him. Dr. Craik, the companion of his youth and his life-long physician, was always a dear and close friend, and the regard between the two is very pleasant to look at, as we see it glancing out here and there in the midst of state papers and official cases. For the officers of the army he had a peculiarly warm feeling, and he had among them many close friends, like Carrington of Virginia, and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina. His immediate staff he regarded with especial affection, and it is worthy of notice that they all not only admired their great chief, but followed him with a personal devotion which is not a little curious if Washington was cold of heart and distant of manner in the intimate association of a military family.