The limner's art in Persia has few patrons, and the professional draughtsman of the present day in that country must needs be an enthusiast, and an art-lover for art's sake, as his remuneration is so small as to be a mere pittance; and the man who can live by his brush must be clever indeed. The Persians are an eminently practical people, and buy nothing unless it be of actual utility; hence the artist has generally to sink to the mere decorator; and as all, even the very rich, expect a great deal for a little money, the work must be scamped in order to produce a great effect for a paltry reward. The artists, moreover, are all self-taught, or nearly so, pupilage merely consisting of the drudgery of preparing the canvas, panel, or other material for the master, mixing the colors, filling in backgrounds, varnishing, &c. There are no schools of art, no lectures, no museums of old or contemporary masters, no canons of taste, no drawing from nature or the model, no graduated studies, or system of any kind. There is, however, a certain custom of adhering to tradition and the conventional; and most of the art workmen of Iran, save the select few, are mere reproducers of the ideas of their predecessors. The system of perspective is erroneous; but neither example nor argument can alter the views of a Persian artist on this subject. Leaving aside the wonderful blending of colors in native carpets, tapestries, and embroideries, all of which improve by the toning influence of age, the modern Persian colorist is remarkable for his skill in the constant use of numerous gaudy and incongruous colors, yet making one harmonious and effective whole, which surprises us by its daring, but compels our reluctant admiration. Persian pictorial art is original, and it is cheap; the wages of a clever artist are about one shilling and sixpence a day. In fact, he is a mere day-laborer, and his terms are, so many days' pay for a certain picture. In this pernicious system of time-work lies the cause of the scamping of many really ingenious pieces of work. As a copyist the Persian is unrivalled; he has a more than Chinese accuracy of reproduction; every copy is a fac-simile of its original, the detail being scamped, or the reverse, according to the scale of payment. In unoriginal work, such as the multiplication of some popular design, a man will pass a lifetime, because he finds it pay better to do this than to originate. This kind of unoriginal decoration is most frequent in the painted mirror cases and book-covers, the designs of which are ancient; and the painter merely reproduces the successful and popular work of some old and forgotten master.