It was left, however, for “The Nation’s Guest” to lift Browere’s art into prominence. At the request of the New York city authorities, Lafayette permitted Browere, in July of 1825, to make a cast of his face. This was so successful that from this time on, Browere was devoted to making casts of the most noted characters in the country’s history, who were then living, with the purpose of forming a national gallery of the busts of famous Americans. He intended to have them reproduced in bronze, and devoted years of labor and the expenditure of much money to the furtherance of his scheme. He wrote to Madison: “Pecuniary emolument never has been my aim. The honor of being favored by my country biases sordid views.” In 1828 he wrote to the same: “I have expended $12,087 in the procuration of the specimens I now have.” These included masks of Presidents John and John Quincy Adams, Jefferson, and Madison, and later was added that of Van Buren; Charles Carroll of Carrollton; Lafayette; De Witt Clinton; Generals Philip Van Cortlandt, Alexander Macomb and Jacob Brown; Commodore David Porter; Secretary of the Navy Samuel L. Southard of New Jersey; and Secretary of the Treasury Richard Rush of Pennsylvania; Justice of the United States Supreme Court Philip Pendleton Barbour; and the great commoner, Henry Clay; Doctors Samuel Latham Mitchill, Valentine Mott, and David Hosack; Edwin Forrest and Tom Hilson, the actors; Charles Francis Adams and Philip Hone; Thomas Addis Emmet and Doctor Cooper of South Carolina; Colonel Stone and Major Noah, of newspaper notoriety; Dolly Madison and Francis Wright; Gilbert Stuart, Paulding, Williams, and Van Wart; and other personages favorably known in their day, but who have slipped out of the niche of worldly immortality, so that even their names fail to awaken a recollection of themselves. Such is the mutability of fame.