Genre:

News-Commentary, Drollery

Subjects:

Light, Physiology, Politics, Disease

    Responds to a Daily News article which reports that bright sunlight affected the eyesight of Emperor Napoleon III of France during his visit to Nice and prevented him from 'recognising his old political associates'. This response plays on the association of words such as brilliance and colour in the fields of light and politics: for example, it argues that the optical effect does not depend on the 'brilliant sun' of Italy, but on the 'sunshine of prosperity', and remembers a time when the 'colour blindness' of politicians was so acute that they could not see 'a man of any other party colour than their own'.