You will think that I shall never have done recommending to you these exterior worldly accomplishments, and you will think right, for I never shall; they are of too great consequence to you for me to be indifferent or negligent about them:  the shining part of your future figure and fortune depends now wholly upon them.  These are the acquisitions which must give efficacy and success to those you have already made.  To have it said and believed that you are the most learned man in England, would be no more than was said and believed of Dr. Bentley; but to have it said, at the same time, that you are also the best-bred, most polite, and agreeable man in the kingdom, would be such a happy composition of a character as I never yet knew any one man deserve; and which I will endeavor, as well as ardently wish, that you may.  Absolute perfection is, I well know, unattainable; but I know too, that a man of parts may be unweariedly aiming at it, and arrive pretty near it.  Try, labor, persevere.  Adieu.

LETTER CXXI

London, November 8, O. S. 1750

My dear friend:  Before you get to Paris, where you will soon be left to your own discretion, if you have any, it is necessary that we should understand one another thoroughly; which is the most probable way of preventing disputes.  Money, the cause of much mischief in the world, is the cause of most quarrels between fathers and sons; the former commonly thinking that they cannot give too little, and the latter, that they cannot have enough; both equally in the wrong.  You must do me the justice to acknowledge, that I have hitherto neither stinted nor grudged any expense that could be of use or real pleasure to you; and I can assure you, by the way, that you have traveled at a much more considerable expense than I did myself; but I never so much as thought of that, while Mr. Harte was at the head of your finances; being very sure that the sums granted were scrupulously applied to the uses for which they were intended.  But the case will soon be altered, and you will be your own receiver and treasurer.  However, I promise you, that we will not quarrel singly upon the quantum, which shall be cheerfully and freely granted:  the application and appropriation of it will be the material point, which I am now going to clear up and finally settle with you.  I will fix, or even name, no settled allowance; though I well know in my own mind what would be the proper one; but I will first try your draughts, by which I can in a good degree judge of your conduct.  This only I tell you in general, that if the channels through which my money is to go are the proper ones, the source shall not be scanty; but should it deviate into dirty, muddy, and obscure ones (which by the bye, it cannot do for a week without my knowing it); I give you fair and timely notice, that the source will instantly be dry.  Mr. Harte, in establishing you at Paris, will point out to you