Peter the Great came to the throne of Russia quite literally through the grace of God, who was, it is true, substantially aided by the inability of the nation to fathom the devious method of Russian statecraft. Before him there had been a period which the Russians themselves have called, "The time of troubles." Anyone who has read the more gay Russian novels will realize how parlous bad must have been these times. After Peter, while the world was waiting for Catherine II, there ruled three weak women, two of them foreigners. They in turn were followed by a child of one, a boy of twelve, and a man whose chief pre-occupation at the age of thirty was to manouvre little lead soldiers over a battle ground of table linen. When one thinks of the country before and after Peter in these terms and then considers the lasting influence he had upon Russia, one must pause in admiration.

The conventional knowledge of Peter is that he cut off priests beards with a stout pair of shears, and that he spent his youth in Holland building boats by day and breaking windows by night. This is all very true and very salty, but there is more. The Vagabond likes to think of Peter as a man of gargantuan size who walks unceasingly with enormous strides through a broad land of Stigian darkness, carrying in his right hand a half burnt match. This is a pretty portrait, but it would never do in a blue book. Tomorrow Mr. Vernadsky will talk in Boylston 21 at ten o'clock on Peter the Great. The Vagabond is going for he will be furnished with knowledge for an examination, a divisional, or for casual talk when the cigars are lit and the port is passed around.

TODAY

10 o'clock

The Dierrell Quartet will play selections from string quartets by Haydn. Music Building.

12 o'clock

Malcolm Holmes and Prof. Ballantine will play the Beethoven Violin and Piano Sonata in C Minor. Music Building.

2 o'clock

"The London of Dickens," Part I, illustrated with lantern slides, Mr. Hersey, Emerson 211.

TOMORROW

11 o'clock

"The Sculpture of the Parthenon," Prof. Chase, Fogg Large Room.

"The Oregon Boundary Dispute," Prof. J. P. Baxter, Harvard 1.

12 o'clock

"Concepts of the National State," Prof. Usher, Widener U.

"Fra Angelico," Prof. Post, Fogg Large Room.

1 o'clock

"Christopher Marlow's Dramatic Works," Prof. J. D. Murray, Harvard 3.