Placards of the most inflammatory character, calling passionately on the riflemen to arm, arm, arm! He himself was hissed at Edinburgh for venturing to say that the rifle-locks would be very rusty if only used against invading Napoleons.
He told me that the Emperor's intentions towards Italy had been undeviatingly ignored, and that whatever had seemed equivocal had been misunderstood, or was the consequence of misunderstanding, or of the press of some otherwise great difficulty.

The Italian question was only beginning to be understood in England.

I said (in my sarcastic way) that at first they had seemed to understand it upside down.

To which he replied that when, at the opening of the Revolution, he came over with several English officers from India, they were _all prepared_ (in case England didn't fight on the Hapsburg side) to enter the Austrian army as volunteers to help them to keep down Italy.
But men like Mr.Trollope find it easy to ignore all this.

It is we who have done the most for Italy--we who did nothing! Yes, I admit so far.
We abstained from helping the Austrians with an open force.
That now we wish well to the Italian cause is true, I hope, but, at best, it is a noble inconsistency; and that we should set up a claim to a nation's gratitude on these grounds seems to me worse than absurd.