These legends are portrayed with varying art but unquestionable spirit, and often much humor; while the poetical legends of the mythical history of ancient Persia, full of strange imagery, find apt illustrators in the Persian artist. The palmy days of book-illustration have departed; the cheap reprints of Bombay have taken away the _raison d'être_ of the caligraphist and book-illustrators, and the few really great artists who remain are employed by the present Shah in illustrating his great copy of the _Arabian Nights_ by miniatures which emulate the beauty and detail of the best specimens of ancient monkish art, or in making bad copies of European lithographs to “adorn” the walls of the royal palaces. As for the painter's studio, it is usually a bare but light apartment, open to the winds, in a corner of which, on a scrap of matting, the artist kneels, sitting on his heels. (It tires an oriental to sit in a chair.) A tiny table a foot high holds all his materials; his paints are mixed on a tile; and his palette is usually a bit of broken crockery. His brushes he makes himself. Water-pipe in mouth—a luxury that even an artist can afford, in a country where tobacco is fourpence a pound—his work held on his knee in his left hand, without a mahl-stick or the assistance of a color-man, the artist squats contentedly at his work. He is ambitious, proud of his powers, and loves his art for art's sake. Generally, he does two classes of work—the one the traditional copies of the popular scenes before described, or the painting on pen cases—by this he lives; the other purely ideal, in which he deals with art from a higher point of view, and practises the particular branch which he affects. As a painter of likenesses, the Persian seldom succeeds in flattering. The likeness is assuredly obtained; but the sitter is usually “guyed,” and a caricature is generally the result. This is not the case in the portraits of females, and in the ideal heads of women and children. The large dreamy eye and long lashes, the full red lips, and naturally high color, the jetty or dark auburn locks (a color caused by the use of henna, a dye) of the Persian women in their natural luxuriance, lend themselves to the successful production of the peculiarly felicitous representation of female beauty in which the Persian artist delights. Accuracy in costume is highly prized, and the minutiæ of dress are indicated with much aptness, the varied pattern of a shawl or scarf being rendered with almost Chinese detail. Beauty of the brunette type is the special choice of the artist and amateur, and “salt”—as a high-colored complexion is termed—is much admired.