But while these men had their day, the school of the lovers of Nature as seen in the external world was making irregular progress. The overwhelming pressure of conventional traditions is shown most forcibly, however, by the fact that the great leader of this school of the students of landscape nature, the man to whom was given the power to see and to represent Nature in all the changing glories and beauties of her ceaselessly varying moods, the man who knew the value of truth and set his desires upon it accordingly,--that this man should have been for years of his life kept down to the imitation of and competition with the works of painters of previous centuries who were supposed to have painted landscapes. But it was Pegasus running a race with cart-horses. He had reached the goal which they had never aspired after. There are nineteen pictures of Turner's here at Manchester; some of them among his noblest works. Here is his Cologne at Sunset; look at it, for the picture will fade before your eyes, and you will stand looking at the golden glow of evening over the church towers, and the gleaming river of the ancient city. With the growth of Turner's power, and the commencement of a better period of public taste and feeling, as marked not only in Art, but in letters, the study of Nature became more manifest in the English school. In different directions, and with different degrees of success, many artists, but generally with more or less faltering, broke away from the old system. Wilkie, Etty, Constable, Collins, and others, often painted simple and sincere pictures, pictures that showed careful study and real love of Nature. All these artists may be seen to advantage here. But in looking at the mass of the collection, one sees that the true principles of Art have not even as yet been generally recognized by the majority of English artists. The last hall of the gallery, which is devoted to the works of living artists, gives especial proof of this fact. But at the same time, it gives proof of the rise of a spirit among a small body of the younger painters, whose influence promises to be of strong and beneficial effect. The artists among whom this spirit exists are the Pre-Raphaelites.