Mr. Harte informs me that you are clothed in sumptuous apparel; a young fellow should be so; especially abroad, where fine clothes are so generally the fashion.  Next to their being fine, they should be well made, and worn easily for a man is only the less genteel for a fine coat, if, in wearing it, he shows a regard for it, and is not as easy in it as if it were a plain one.

I thank you for your drawing, which I am impatient to see, and which I shall hang up in a new gallery that I am building at Blackheath, and very fond of; but I am still more impatient for another copy, which I wonder I have not yet received, I mean the copy of your countenance.  I believe, were that a whole length, it would still fall a good deal short of the dimensions of the drawing after Dominichino, which you say is about eight feet high; and I take you, as well as myself, to be of the family of the Piccolomini.  Mr. Bathurst tells me that he thinks you rather taller than I am; if so, you may very possibly get up to five feet eight inches, which I would compound for, though I would wish you five feet ten.  In truth, what do I not wish you, that has a tendency to perfection?  I say a tendency only, for absolute perfection is not in human nature, so that it would be idle to wish it.  But I am very willing to compound for your coming nearer to perfection than the generality of your contemporaries:  without a compliment to you, I think you bid fair for that.  Mr. Harte affirms (and if it were consistent with his character would, I believe, swear) that you have no vices of the heart; you have undoubtedly a stock of both ancient and modern learning, which I will venture to say nobody of your age has, and which must now daily increase, do what you will.  What, then, do you want toward that practicable degree of perfection which I wish you?  Nothing but the knowledge, the turn, and the manners of the world; I mean the ‘beau monde’.  These it is impossible that you can yet have quite right; they are not given, they must be learned.  But then, on the other hand, it is impossible not to acquire them, if one has a mind to them; for they are acquired insensibly, by keeping good company, if one has but the least attention to their characters and manners.

Every man becomes, to a certain degree, what the people he generally converses with are.  He catches their air, their manners, and even their way of thinking.  If he observes with attention, he will catch them soon, but if he does not, he will at long run contract them insensibly.  I know nothing in the world but poetry that is not to be acquired by application and care.  The sum total of this is a very comfortable one for you, as it plainly amounts to this in your favor, that you now want nothing but what even your pleasures, if they are liberal ones, will teach you.  I congratulate both you and myself upon your being in such a situation, that, excepting your exercises, nothing is now wanting but pleasures to complete you.  Take them, but