Prince Soltykoff has not followed the too commonly adopted recipe for writing a book of travels. He has not on his return home read every body else's book on the same subject,--and then condensed his readings into one volume, bristling with erudition and stuck full of learned notes which, ten to one, are either not read at all or read in the wrong place. As to notes--there are not two to each volume. Satisfied with having said nothing that is not true, and with having related nothing that he has not seen, he feels no misgivings or regret at leaving much unsaid. Of all the information which can be acquired without leaving one's fireside in London or St. Petersburg he gives not a word, but the valuable testimony of the eyewitness he records in a series of drawings in which Eastern life is 'taken in the fact' with a truth and liveliness of touch rarely found in an amateur pencil. The letter-press is a secondary part of the work,--merely to render the drawings intelligible; and we are convinced that if the author could have imagined a more unpretending title for his book than the one given, he would have selected it. Indeed, the word _book_ is scarcely an appropriate one to use on this occasion; and we may compare the pleasure which we have derived in perusing Prince Soltykoff's travels both in Persia and in India to that afforded by the inspection of the album of an intelligent traveller who should enliven the exhibition by his agreeable and instructive conversation. The travels in India took place between the years 1841 and 1846, while those in Persia were accomplished as far back as 1838. We are not told why the publication has been so long delayed, and can account for it only by supposing that the fashion which has lately brought before the public in the capacity of authors so many subjects of the Czar, was not in 1838 so prevalent at St. Petersburg. Be that as it may, a picture of the Eastern world in its immobility can brave a lapse of time which would prove fatal to the likeness of any portraiture of European society. The following sketch, for instance, is likely to be as true now, as when it was written:--