nt as clerk in the office of Public Records. In due time,
having proved his capacity and peculiar fitness, he was promoted to the
post of Assistant Keeper, which gave him a respectable position and some
leisure.

He proved to be in an eminent sense the right man in the right place.
Besides publishing, from time to time, curious and interesting documents
which he discovered in his office, he called attention, by a series of
vigorous pamphlets, to the chaotic condition in which the public records
of Great Britain were kept. Gradually these pamphlets made an
impression, and they led at length to a reform in the office. The
records were rearranged, catalogued, rendered safe, and made accessible
to students. This has already led to important corrections in history,
and to a great increase in the sum of historical knowledge.

When the subject of cheap postage came up in 1840, the government
offered four prizes of a hundred pounds each for suggestions in aid of
Sir Rowland Hill's plan. One of these prizes was assigned to Henry Cole.
He was one of the persons who first became converts to the idea of penny
postage, and he lent the aid of his pen and influence to its adoption.

At length, about the year 1845, he entered upon the course of
proceedings which rendered him one of the most influential and useful
persons of his time. He had long lamented the backward condition of arts
of design in England, and the consequent ugliness of the various objects
in the sight and use of which human beings pass their lives. English
furniture, wall-papers, carpets, curtains, cutlery, garments,
upholstery, ranged from the tolerable to the hideous, and were inferior
to the manufactures of France and Germany. He organized a series of
exhibitions on a small scale, somewhat similar to those of the American
Institute in New York, which has held a competitive exhibition of
natural and manufactured objects every autumn for the last fifty years.

His exhibitions attracted attention, and they led at length to the
Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851. The merit of that scheme must be
shared between Henry Cole and Prince Albert. Cole suggested that his
small exhibitions should, once in five years, assume a national
character, and invite contributions from all parts of the empire. Yes,
said Prince Albert, and let us also invite competition from foreign
countries on equal terms with native products.

The Exhibition of 1851 was admirably managed, and had eve