The palaces of Ispahan are decorated with large oil paintings by the most eminent Persian artists of their day. All are life-size, and none are devoid of merit. Some are very clever, particularly the likenesses of Futteh Ali Shah and his sons, several of whom were strikingly like their father. As Futteh Ali Shah had an acknowledged family of seventy-two, this latter fact is curious. These paintings are without frames, spaces having been made in the walls to receive them. The Virgin Mary is frequently represented in these mural paintings; also a Mr. Strachey, a young diplomate who accompanied the English mission to Persia in the reign of our Queen Elizabeth, is still admired as a type of adolescent beauty. He is represented with auburn hair in the correct costume of the period; and copies of his portrait are still often painted on the pen-cases of amateurs. These pen-cases, or _kalamdans_, are the principal occupation of the miniature-painter. As one-fourth of the male population of Persia can write, and as each man has one or more pen-cases, the artist finds a constant market for his wares in their adornment. The pen-case is a box of _papier-mâché_ eight inches long, an inch and a half broad, and the same deep. Some of them, painted by artists of renown, are of great value, forty pounds being a common price to pay for such a work of art by a rich amateur. Several fine specimens may be seen in the Persian Collection at the South Kensington Museum. It is possible to spend a year's hard work on the miniatures painted on a pen-case. These are very minute and beautiful. The writer possesses a pen-case, painted during the lifetime of Futteh Ali Shah, a king of Persia who reigned long and well. All the faces—none more than a quarter of an inch in diameter—are likenesses; and the long black beard of the king reaching to his waist, is not exaggerated, for such beards are common in Persia.