Once you looked on the earth
with rose-colored spectacles, but now you see the naked and
commonplace reality of the things you used to think so radiant."
Browning's answer is significant, and the figure he uses wonderfully
apt. Suppose you are going to travel in Europe: you go to the
optician, and you ask for a first-rate magnifying-glass, that you
may scan the ocean, and view the remote corners of cathedrals. Now
imagine him saying that he has for you something far better than that:
he has a lovely kaleidoscope: apply your eye to the orifice, turn a
little wheel, and you will behold all sorts of pretty colored
rosettes. You would be naturally indignant. "Do you take me for a
child to be amused with a rattle? I don't want pretty colors: I want
something that will bring the object, _exactly as it is_, as near to
my eyes as it can possibly be brought."
Indeed, when one buys a glass for a telescope, if one has sufficient
cash, one buys a glass made of crown and flint glass placed together,
which destroys color, which produces what is called an _achromatic_
lens.
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