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NA TURE 



311 



to-be-baffled Director gave his superiors no peace, and 

 probably would have been equally importunate and equally 

 unsatisfied if he had reached the age of Methusaleh. 

 This worrying may have been very unpleasant for the 

 political heads of the department, but it has been a good 

 thing for the country. Whoever visits South Kensington 

 Museum and profits by his visit should bless the per- 

 tinacity of Henry Cole. Not only the Government was 

 waylaid, but the Queen and Prince Albert, and other 

 collectors and possessors of art objects were invited 

 and persuaded to give the public an opportunity of seeing 

 them for a time in the Museum. Loan exhibitions of 

 furniture, &c, were formed, and photographs, casts, and 

 rotypes were made of the finest objects which thus 

 came temporarily into the possession of the Museum. 

 This system of reproduction has helped to develop im- 

 mensely certain divisions of the Museum, and is likely to 

 be of immense benefit to museums generally. Witness 

 the splendid electrotype reproductions of Corpora- 

 tion and College plate in South Kensington Museum. 

 Purchases were made from the Bernal Collection and that 

 of M. Soulages was added to the treasures of South Kens- 

 ington after an intricate series of negotiations. The 

 pictures which the Rev. John Sheepshanks bequeathed to 

 the nation also found a home here, but his desire that 

 they should be on view for the working people on their 

 day of rest has not been respected. The Editors note 

 the condition on which the bequest was made, and dryly 

 add that after the arrival of the collection at South Kens- 

 ington it was inspected on many successive Sundaj s by 

 members of the Legislature and their friends, but it was 

 hardly their Sundays in particular that this public bene- 

 factor desired to refine and brighten. South Kensington 

 um succeeded to Marlborough House in 1857, and 

 it continued under the rule of ''King Cole'' till 1S73, 

 when he retired on full pay, not altogether willingly, we 

 believe. No doubt he was a despot, but in the early 

 stages of unique institutions a despot is necessary. As 

 it stands, South Kensington Museum is a lasting monu- 

 ment of his foresight, his delight in work, and zeal for the 

 material prosperity of his country. 



But the Science and Art Department is Sir Henry 

 Cole's greatest work, and the greatest monument of his 

 genius. How he kept on teasing the Government for 

 ni' >ncy and spending more than was allowed, till at last 

 he had put together a noble collection, and the Museum 

 was a fact — this is generally known ; but the history of 

 the Science and Art Department has yet to be told. It 

 w.m conceived and constructed by a dogged inventive 

 genius which knew how to turn difficulties into stepping- 

 stones to success, and to wear out stolid opposition by 

 vivacious pertinacity. 



This Department was formed as a branch of the Edu- 

 cation Department, with Henry Cole as its head, its hands, 

 and its feet, under the nominal control of the successive 

 Presidents and Vice-Presidents of the Privy Council. 

 These statesmen we will venture to say had little idea of 

 what was being done in their name. The grants which 

 the manager was able from time to time to obtain were 

 utterly insufficient for ordinary lines. We know the 

 old jog-trot idea which a commonplace mind would 

 have formed : First, to train teachers, and then to found 



and maintain schools in the different towns of the land; 

 but Cole's plan was to bribe teachers to qualify them- 

 selves by promising them payments on the results of 

 examinations in various centres supplied with papers from 

 London to be worked out under local committees at a 

 minimum of expense. Soon the land was covered with 

 schools of art and science classes, to the astonishment of 

 the statesmen who supposed that they had been holding 

 the reins. As a result, the English people were converted 

 from Philistinism, and became ardent lovers of art. In 

 the poorest cottages may now be found vessels of artistic 

 design and other delights of the eye, as cheap as the ugly 

 patterns which obtained everywhere except in the houses 

 of the richest a few years ago. In the recent debates in the 

 French Parliament on the proposed renewal of the Com- 

 mercial Treaty with England, the French Minister stated 

 that when that treaty was first made, in 1859, France 

 supplied England with almost all its objects of art, but 

 that in the interval, owing to the work of the schools 

 of art, the tables had been turned, and it was now 

 England that was pouring these articles into France. It 

 was ce terrible Cole who had stuck to his work, undeterred 

 by abuse and opposition, till he had redeemed England 

 from its dependence on the ingenuity of France. 



Sir Henry Cole's retirement from office in 1873 did not 

 mean retirement from work. Out of office, he set himself 

 to do for music and cookery and sanitation what he had 

 largely done for art, namely, to make their principles and 

 practice common and populir. He pictured an England 

 whose toilers, admitted to participate in the benefits of 

 civilisation, found relief in refined enjoyments from the 

 depression resulting from the minute division of labour 

 into dreary monotonous tasks, without variety. The part 

 he bore in establishing the Kensington Training School 

 of Cookery and the School of Music, and his share in 

 promoting the Albert Hall, will best show the earnest 

 work of his later years. His work and his life in fact 

 ceased together. 



Whoever will read the list of the tasks which Sir Henry 

 Cole set himself, as enumerated at the beginning of this 

 article, will not find it hard to discern running through 

 the whole of this busy aggressive life one constant, con- 

 tinuous idea. Like the great English reformer who 

 vowed that he would make things plain for a ploughman 

 which had been reserved for the understanding of a cul- 

 tivated few, Henry Cole lived to make the poor sharers- 

 in the best benefits of modern civilisation. He set him- 

 self to make common those refining agencies which tend 

 to cheer and sweeten the dull monotony of excessive toil 

 and hopeless poverty. Hence his efforts to stimulate the 

 creative faculties of the nation, to make known our art 

 treasures, to cheapen specimens of art and to call out the 

 dormant sense of delight in the beautiful, so as to reach 

 and raise men through their higher faculties of enjoyment. 

 He who sets himself to " level up " and to destroy privi- 

 leges by making them common will have enemies enough 

 in his time. Probably Sir Henry Cole had his full share 

 of abuse and misrepresentation. But, unlike many of 

 the world's benefactors, he lived to see much good fruit 

 resulting from his pertinacious toil for the public good, 

 and he will not soon be forgotten by a grateful country. 



Newton Price 



