Even in stamps history has a habit of repeating itself.
Some thirty-six years ago there was issued in Portugal a special set of stamps commemorative of the seventh cen- tenary of the birth, at Lisbon, of the Franciscan Saint Antony of Padua. The philatelists of those days would have none of them, with the consequence that the greater part of the issue had to be destroyed unsold, and to-day they are some- what hard to come by. Italy has just produced. an almost entirely similar series dedicated to the same eremite upon the seven .hundredth anniversary of his death at Padua in 1231. A parallel case is provided by, the advent of a new set of Portuguese stamps in celebration of the 360th anni• versary of the publication of Camoens' epic history of the Lusitanians, Os Lusiadas, having previously paid tribute to the author's memory with an extensive series of pictorial stamps in 1924. Thus religion and literature are glorified in the latest additions to the stamp collector's album.
DOUGLAS B. ARMSTRONG.
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