EDITORS DAILY CRIMSON: I would like to call attention to the course of lectures given by Prof. Lyon, which begin to-night in Boylston Hall, and especially to the subject of this first lecture.

It is one of the mysteries of fate that great characters in history are often known to the world as the direct opposites of that which they really were. The misrepresentations of contemporaries, or the imaginations of succeeding ages, give such a distorted picture as to make impossible any just conception of the man. Sometimes a character, whose representations are thus distorted, becomes his own vindicator. Perhaps no great man in the world's history has been more completely misunderstood than Sardanapalus. But we may now judge him according to his works, a thing which before our day was impossible. By excavations in the ruins of mineveh, the library of Sardanapalus has been recovered, and by the brilliant studies of English and German scholars, the contents of that library have now become the possession of the world. Judged by his works, Sardanapalus is neither a weakling nor a sensualist, but as statesman and as patron of letters one of the most interesting characters of history.

'87.