onsequence, able to
afford his son the opportunity of a good education, and to launch him
on the grand tour of Europe with every aptitude for the costly vices
that men in those days seemed to think it the chief object of travel to
cultivate, and with plenty of money in his pocket to gratify all his
inclinations. Rigby did not take much advantage of his educational
opportunities. His Latinity laid him open to derision in the House of
Commons, and there were times when his spelling would have reflected
little credit upon a seamstress. But he was quite capable of learning
abroad all the evil that the great school of evil was able to teach a
willing student. He returned to England, and began his life there with
three pronounced tastes: for gambling, for wine, and for the baser uses
of politics. His ambitions prompted him to adhere to the party of the
Prince of Wales, and his ready purse won him a welcome among the
courtiers of Leicester House. The Prince of {37} Wales did little to
gratify his hopes, and Rigby would have found it difficult to escape
from the straits into which his debts had carried him if his gift of
pleasing had not procured for him a powerful patron. The Duke of
Bedford had been attracted by the remarkable convivial powers of Rigby,
powers remarkable in an age when to be conspicuous for conviviality
demanded very unusual capacity both of head and of stomach. To be
admired by Bedford was in itself a patent of dishonor, but it was a
profitable patent to Rigby. The Duke, who was accused at times of a
shameful parsimony, was generous to profusion towards the bloated
buffoon who was able and willing to divert him, and from that hour
Rigby's pockets never wanted their supply of public money.

There were few redeeming features in Rigby's character. It was his
peculiar privilege to be false to his old friends and to corrupt his
young ones. In an age when sobriety was scorned or ignored he had the
honor to be famous for his insobriety. A sycophant to those who could
serve him and a bully to those who could not, Rigby added the meanness
of the social parvenu to the malignity of the political bravo. At a
time when men of birth and rank came to the House of Commons in the
negligence of morning dress, Rigby was conspicuous for the splendor of
his attire, and illuminated the green benches by a costume whose glow
of color only faintly attenuated the glowing color of his face. There
were baser and darker sp