The South Kensington[84] machinery is not the only artistic growth of the Victorian age. The National Gallery had been in existence more than ten years before the reign began (since 1824). It was not a popular institution until a year later, the architect Wilkins having made the design, the present building in Trafalgar Square was opened, April 9, 1838. The nucleus of the collection was the Angerstein pictures, thirty-eight in number, bought by the Government for £57,000. Twenty-seven years had still to pass before the Trafalgar Square structure was enlarged to its existing size by a parliamentary vote of £50,000. The immediate era of the Queen's accession was marked by the purchase of a masterpiece of Murillo, a landscape by Salvator Rosa, and an important picture by Rubens. Still the Gallery lingered below the Imperial dignity of the nation to which it belonged. The Vernon bequest enriched it only when the Queen had been on the Throne ten years. It was not till after the Crimean War that Parliament could attend to artistic claims, and that under the Directorship of Sir Charles Eastlake, deservedly trusted by Crown and country, the rooms designed by Barry were added to the block which Wilkins had shaped. The institution, now endowed with the paintings that had belonged to Sir Robert Peel, began steadily to approach towards the dimensions and the dignity of an Art Gallery comparable with that of any other capital in the world. Nor probably have its perfections or its premises yet reached their final limit.