They were portraits of great men of history who had spent their lives in perpetual devotion to a great human ideal: Thaddeus Kosciusko, the hero whose dying words had been Finis Poloniae; Markos Botzaris, for modern Greece the reincarnation of Sparta's King Leonidas; Daniel O'Connell, Ireland's defender; George Washington, founder of the American Union; Daniele Manin, the Italian patriot; Abraham Lincoln, dead from the bullet of a believer in slavery; and finally, that martyr for the redemption of the black race, John Brown, hanging from his gallows as Victor Hugo's pencil has so terrifyingly depicted.
Eran retratos, retratos de esos grandes hombres históricos cuya existencia no ha sido más que una permanente y abnegada entrega a un gran ideal: Kosciusko, el héroe caído al grito de Finis Poloniae; Botzaris, el Leónidas de la Grecia moderna; O'Connell, el defensor de Irlanda; Washington, el fundador de la Unión americana; Manin, el patriota italiano; Lincoln, asesinado a tiros por un esclavista, y, por último, el mártir de la liberación de la raza negra, John Brown, colgado en la horca, tal como lo dibujó tan terriblemente el lápiz de Victor Hugo.