There were, however, two foreigners who certainly did exercise a decided influence upon art in America, and cannot properly be omitted from any consideration of the causes that helped the plastic art onward in these United States. Both of them were men of commanding ability and importance in sculpture. One was the eminent French statuary Houdon, who visited this country in 1785, to prepare himself to produce his famous statue of Washington; and the other, the not much less able Italian, Giuseppe Ceracchi, who came here, in 1791, for love of freedom, and lived among us about four years. Ceracchi’s plan for an elaborate monument to commemorate the American Revolution, which was warmly taken up by Washington and members of the cabinet, and received the consideration of Congress, made his artistic proclivities better known, and gave the subject a wider range than the limited scope of Houdon’s work. Yet the influence of both these eminent devotees of the plastic art left, without doubt, a strong impression upon the minds of the people--an impression constantly refreshed by the sight of their works, which helped to create a healthy atmosphere for the development of a taste among us for the plastic art. NOTE. John Dixey, an Irishman about whom little is known, and John Eckstein, a German by birth and an Englishman by adoption and education, settled here toward the close of the last century, and both did some work in modelling and in stone-cutting; but they were of mediocre ability, and left no impression upon the artistic instinct of the people. III _John Henri Isaac Browere_ What one generation fails to appreciate, and therefore decries and sneers at, a subsequent one comprehends and applauds. It is conspicuously so in discovery, in science, in poetry, and in art; so much depends upon the point of view and the environment of the observed and of the observer. Were these remarks not true, the very remarkable collection of busts from life masks, taken at the beginning of the second quarter of the present century, by John Henri Isaac Browere, almost an unknown name a year ago, would not have been hidden away until their recent unearthing. The circumstances that led to their discovery are as curious as that the busts should have been neglected and forgotten for so long. John Henri Isaac Browere, the son of Jacob Browere and Ann Catharine Gendon, was born at No. 55, Warren Street, [Illustration: JOHN HENRI ISAAC BROWERE]