We have only to consider the fact that artistic ornamentation was applied to innumerable objects in daily service to realize how widely diffused was the taste for art among the Persians. They have truly been always an art-loving people. Some one has aptly remarked that every home in India is a nursery of art, and I think this must once have been true of the home in Persia. Apropos of Persian ornament it may be remarked that the native artists have always delighted in varied and symmetrical patterns of great intricacy. External beauty, too, seems to have been sought, rather than intrinsic thorough excellence of fabrique, excepting, of course, the products of the Persian looms and the works of the masters in metal. As to Persian pottery, it has always been more or less of a puzzle to antiquarians. The ancient pieces in a perfect state of preservation are exceedingly few and rare, and all have been recovered from ruined areas. There yet remain vast areas to be excavated by enterprising antiquarian expeditions and later efforts are sure to be productive. The ancient lustre faience dates back many centuries. Its genre was carried down as late as 1586. The finest Persian ware resembles Chinese porcelain somewhat, having a white ground with azure-blue decoration in bold, free designs. The paste is hard and the color is not blended with the glaze. Later specimens of this genre have less good design, blending color, and a glaze showing greater vitrification. A second sort of Persian faience is thicker, shows a departure from Chinese influence somewhat, has a softer and more porous paste, is brighter in the blue, has a less even glaze, and a less well-drawn design. Red enters, as also relief and gaufrures. A third sort of ware is denser and harder, of blackish color on a white ground, with thick glaze, and some pieces have been varnished with single color. Such pieces in this genre as exhibit figures in the decoration show these without faces, which would suggest that this class of pottery was the product of Persian potters of the Mussulman Sunnis sect, a sect more rigidly opposed to presenting the human face in art than that of the Shiahs. A fourth sort of ware is white and translucent, of still harder paste, and bearing no marks or makers. I have seen this ware only in small pieces. It is rare and is usually styled _porcelaine blanche de Perse_. A fifth sort of faience is also translucid, very thin, and ornamented with lacy designs. The ruins of Rhages have yielded examples of the sixth sort of faience, a common pottery of reddish clay varnished with single color, and all somewhat in imitation of the celadon porcelain of China. The green and bronze varnish is often very beautiful. Some of these pieces have designs in relief and gaufrure.