Berlin, which, though brought up to the present day, contains only 29,000 specimens of adhesive stamps and postal stationery. Among these, however, are some of the greatest rarities, such as the Post Office' Mauritius of 1847, Hawaiian Islands of 1851-2, Réunion of 1852, British Guiana of 1856 (4 cents, blue), Canada 12d. of 1851, and an unused Moldavian (81 paras) of 1858.

Founded in 1869, the Philatelic Society, London, received in 1890 a notable accession to its membership in the person of the Duke of Edinburgh, who accepted the office of Vice-President of the Society. In 1893 the then Duke of York also joined the Society, and was elected Honorary Vice-President. His Royal Highness had for some years been an ardent philatelist, his collection having been begun, we understand, when, as a midshipman, he was given some stamps by the Duke of Edinburgh. In 1896 he gave a further token of his interest in postage stamps by assuming the Presidentship of the Society in succession to the late Earl of Kingston; and in the following year he opened the London Philatelic Exhibition, at which he showed portions of his collection. In 1904, as Prince of Wales, he read in person before the Philatelic Society a paper on 'The Postal Issues of the United Kingdom during the present Reign,' giving full particulars, inter alia, of the preparation of the trial dies and types of the Edwardian series of postage stamps. This paper, which was reproduced with illustrations in the 'London Philatelist' of the same year, was modestly described by its author as the endeavour of a "prentice hand "'; but the Prince's work, authoritative and based on extended research, is, as a matter of fact, an important historical postal document. In 1906 his late Majesty signified his pleasure that the Society should be styled 'The Royal Philatelic Society'; and it is no secret that this distinction was largely due to the influence of the Prince, now King George V, who, on his accession, honoured the Society by becoming its Patron.

Apart from a number of albums of stamps that have been presented to him on various occasions, the King's stamp collection is confined to the postal issues of the British Empire, of which it is now one of the most comprehensive in existence. In certain countries and groups it is exceptionally complete; and among these we may

6

cite especially Mauritius, St Helena, Hong Kong, Fiji, Grenada, Nevis, and South Australia, the collection of the last-named colony being probably unsurpassed. The single rarities are far too numerous to be mentioned in detail. They comprise such cabinet-pieces' as the 'twelve pence' Canada, used, on the original letter; unique entire sheets, such as the d. and 1d. British stamps of King Edward arranged in tête-bêche groups, and the New Zealand 2d. vermilion (Plate II of 1872) showing all the retouches; and such rarae aves as a Great Britain 6d. purple of 1904 with the 'I.R. OFFICIAL' overprint. Of special interest are specimens, both unused and postmarked, of a 2d. purple stamp bearing the profile of King Edward, which was intended to be issued to the public on the 6th or 7th of May 1910, but was recalled on the King's death on the morning of the former day. With regard to the collection of Mauritius it may be added that one of the specimens is associated with what may be termed a veritable Romance of a Postage Stamp.' Many years ago, a resident of Hampstead, then a schoolboy, made a collection of stamps. It contained nothing but specimens of trivial value, with the solitary exception of a 'Post Office' Mauritius stamp, issued in 1847-a stamp of the face-value of 2d., printed in blue, unused, and in faultless preservation, with a margin on each side. The specimen was put up at auction in January 1904, amid a large assemblage of stamp-dealers and collectors. The bidding started at 5007., and went by hundreds to 7001., this latter price being offered by a collector who already possessed two copies of the 1d. red stamp of the same issue. Two dealers raised the bidding to 1400l., at which point one dropped out; and the stamp was then knocked down to the other, acting for the Prince of Wales, at what remains the record price for a single stamp-1450l.

As to the value of rare postage stamps in general, it may be said that, after the original stamp mania had died away, the prices of the scarcer stamps of the old issues rose but little during the rest of the sixties. Throughout the seventies their value was practically stationary; in 1870 a Brussels dealer sold a 1d. 'Post Office' Mauritius stamp to Baron Arthur de Rothschild for 201.; and so late as 1878, 201. was all that was obtain

able for the still rarer 2 cent pink stamp of the first British Guiana issue, now worth considerably more than 1000l. But during a period which may be roughly put at 1880-95 the average rise in the price of early rarities was something like sevenfold. After that, these prices, though showing a constant tendency to rise, remained on the whole at much the same level; but in the last year or two the increase in values has again shown itself in a marked degree. If we take the value of whole collections, rather than that of single stamps, we find that a collection of stamps was sold in London in 1866 for 365l., and this was probably a record price for that period, though it may have been exceeded when the Herpin collection was sold to Mr Philbrick in the same year. We are on surer ground when we come to 1878, in which year the late Sir Daniel Cooper's collection was sold to a Parisian amateur for 3000l. This sale was then thought to exceed the wildest bounds of extravagance; but it was surpassed in 1882, when the same amateur bought the collection of Mr Philbrick for 8000l. In 1894 10,000l. was paid by a dealer for the Castle collection of Australian stamps alone. In 1900 the Castle collection of unused European stamps was sold to a collector for a sum approaching 30,000l., and was resold in 1906 to a dealer at a price slightly exceeding that amount. In 1906-7 the auction sale of the Le Roy d'Etiolles collection realised the sum of 36,4217.; this, however, was hardly a collection in the true sense of the word, being rather the accumulated stock of a collectordealer. In 1907 the Breitfuss collection, a general one, was bought by a dealer at a price said to be over 30,0007.; but the record amount for a general collection was probably that obtained for the Mirabaud collection, for, though the Mirabaud auction sale in 1909 realised only 21,1207., this did not include several important sections which were privately disposed of, and of which the Swiss section alone was sold for an amount variously stated at 80007. and 12,000l. In the same year the collection of the late Sir W. B. Avery was sold for 24,500l. to a dealer, who, in 1912, purchased a large part of Lord Crawford's collection at a still higher price.

Although it bore the date of 1862, the first catalogue of postage stamps appeared, as we have said, in Vol. 218.-No. 435

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1861; and the jubilee year of philatelic literature was handsomely commemorated by the appearance of the 'Catalogue of the Philatelic Library of the Earl of Crawford, K.T.,' forming the seventh volume of the 'Bibliotheca Lindesiana,' and described on the title-page of the private edition as 'a bibliography of the writings, general, special, and periodical, forming the literature of philately.' The contents of this folio volume of nearly a thousand columns are devoted to a material far vaster in extent than bibliographers had imagined; and of this material the late Lord Crawford himself stated that, so far as his experience went, no class of literature within the whole range of bibliography shows so large a proportion of rare and ephemeral works as that devoted to postage stamps. In the section dealing with periodicals we find over two thousand titles of separate publications, most of them issued in Great Britain, the United States and Germany, but accompanied by others hailing from a score of such out-of-the-way localities as San Marino, Tripoli, the Azores and Canaries, Curaçao, San Domingo, and so on. Although the work is described as being a catalogue of philatelic literature, a small proportion of the Library is formed of works on postal history generally, including a large number of Parliamentary Papers and a still more important series of 'Proclamations concerning the Post.' It is gratifying to know that this unrivalled collection of philatelic publications has recently been bequeathed to the British Museum, of which Lord Crawford was, in his lifetime, not only a trustee but also a generous benefactor.

BERTRAM T. K. SMITH.

Art. 6.-ADENET LE ROI: THE END OF A LITERARY

ERA.

1. Les Enfances Ogier; Berte aus grans piés; Bueves de Commarchis. Edited by A. Scheler. Brussels: Closson,

1874.

2. Cléomadès.

Edited by A. van Hasselt.

Devaux, 1865–66.

Brussels :

3. Histoire littéraire de la France (vol. xx). By Paulin Paris. Paris: Didot, 1842.

4. The Mediaeval Mind. By H. O. Taylor. Two vols. London and New York: Macmillan, 1911.

THE 12th and 13th centuries witnessed a memorable struggle in France-a struggle in the domain of literary taste. It was a struggle for popularity between the serious narrative poetry of history, of legend and of heroic tradition, and the artistic poetry of adventure and imagination. For the former, the French are indebted to their Germanic ancestors; for the latter, to their Celtic neighbours. Men of the day were perfectly aware of the wide cleft that separated these two schools of medieval poetry. We still follow the 13th century classification of Jean Bodel, when we refer to the poetry dealing with the legendary heroes and wars of the nation as la matière de France; while most of the romantic poems of adventure we include in the term matière de Bretagne, because they either narrate, or are inspired by, the wonderful deeds of Arthur, king of Britain, and of the knights associated with him about the Round Table.

After the middle of the 12th century, the upper classes of society looked for their ideal rather to the courteous knights modelled upon those of the Round Table than to the uncompromising old warriors of Charlemagne's bodyguard. It was in the pleasant adventures of roving knights and lorn ladies that chivalry found delight, rather than in the prolix narration of never-ending struggles with Saracens or with recalcitrant vassals. The bourgeoisie of the northern cities, however, which was to be reckoned with as a patron of literature after 1200, lagged behind in this evolution of literary taste. The bourgeoisie and the