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 Cole of government, who dissolved their previous partnership with the exhibition commissioners. The collections from Marlborough House had already been moved into them. A new gallery, built for the pictures presented by Mr. Sheepshanks, was opened by the queen 20 June 1857. The erection of the buildings on this land, the formation of various collections, and the development of the department of science and art were Cole's great occupations until his final resignation in April 1873. His activity was always conspicuous; and his belief in the advantages of publicity occasionally led him to steps which made him the object of much (and often very unfair) ridicule in the press. His imperturbable good temper was never ruffled, and he generally succeeded in getting his own way. The great development of the system was chiefly due to his unremitting energy.

In 1858 he had proposed to build a great hall to be opened on occasion of the exhibition of 1862. Financial difficulties caused the abandonment of the scheme, but it was revived as part of the national memorial to the prince consort. The subscriptions being insufficient, Cole exerted himself to raise the funds by 'perpetual or freehold admissions.' The scheme was finally launched in 1865, the first stone laid in 1867, and the Royal Albert Hall finally opened 29 March 1871. Cole was also very active in starting the National Training School for Music, which was opened 17 May 1876, and formed the basis of the Royal College of Music, with its similar but wider scheme of open scholarships, founded in 1882.

After retiring from office, Cole continued to take an interest in many schemes of social and educational reform. He helped in organisingthe school for cookery during 1873-6. From 1876 to 1879 he lived at Birmingham and Manchester, and was director of a company formed to carry out General Scott's processes for the utilisation of sewage. He returned to London in 1880, and died there 18 April 1882.

He was made K.C.B. in March 1875; was nominated to the Legion of Honour in 1855; promoted to the higher grade in 1867; and received the Iron Cross of Austria in 1863.

Cole was a most amiable man in private life, and a friend of many distinguished contemporaries, especially of Thackeray, who contributed caricatures at his suggestion to the 'Anti-Cornlaw Circular.' His official papers and writings in periodicals of various kinds were numerous; he edited a cheap newspaper called the 'Guide' during his struggle with the record commission, Buller and Molesworth being co-proprietors with him, and from 1849 to 1852 edited a 'Journal of Design.' In 1875 he edited a collected edition of Peacock's works, to which Lord Houghton contributed a preface.

He was married, 28 Dec. 1833, to Marian Fairman, third daughter of William Andrew Bond of Ashford, Kent. She survives with a family of three sons and five daughters.

 COLE, HUMFRAY (fl. 1570–1580), engraver, was, according to his own description, a native of the north of England, and the specimens we have of his work show him to have been a careful and ingenious workman. He was employed in engraving mathematical and similar instruments in brass, of which there are some specimens in the British Museum. One of these is an astrolabe, most ingeniously constructed and beautifully engraved, at one time in the possession of Henry, prince of Wales. For the second edition of Archbishop Parker's, or the 'Bishops' Bible,' published in 1572, he engraved a map of the Holy Land, on which he describes himself as 'Humfray Cole, goldsmith, a Englishman born in ye north and pertayning to ye Mint in the Tower, 1572.' On the strength of his having engraved this map he has been credited with the portraits of Queen Elizabeth, Leicester, and Burghley, which appear in the same book; but the execution of these does not resemble his work, and they occur in the first edition of the bible published in 1568, from which Cole's map is absent. From his employment at the mint and the general character of his work he appears to have been only a mechanician and not an artist.

 COLE, JOHN (1792–1848), bookseller and antiquary, of Northampton and Scarborough, was born on 3 Oct. 1792 at Weston Favell in Northamptonshire. He was apprenticed to Mr. W. Birdsall, a bookseller of Northampton, and began his literary career with a 'History of Northampton and its Vicinity' in 1815. About two years later he married Susanna, second daughter of James Marshall of Northampton, and in 1817 purchased for 1,000l. the stock and goodwill of a bookseller at Lincoln. He printed his first 'Catalogue of Old Books' at Lincoln in that year. He brought out a 'History of 