With the Italian Renaissance came the full modern æsthetic enjoyment of animals; the admiration of their beauty and perfection which had been appreciated, of course, long before, but not quite in the same spirit. The all-round gifted Leo Battista Alberti in the fifteenth century took the same critical delight in the points of a fine animal that a modern expert would take. He was a splendid rider, but his interest was not confined to horses; his love for his dog is shown by his having pronounced a funeral oration over him. We feel that with such men humanity towards animals was a part of good manners. “We owe justice to men,” said the intensely civilised Montaigne, “and grace and benignity to other creatures that are capable of it; there is a natural commerce and mutual obligation between them and us.” Sir Arthur Helps, speaking of this, called it “using courtesy to animals,” and when one comes to think of it, is not such “courtesy” the particular mark and sign of a man of good breeding in all ages? The Renaissance brought with it something deeper than a wonderful quickening of the æsthetic sense in all directions; it also brought that spiritual quickening which is the co-efficient of every really upward movement of the human mind. Leonardo da Vinci, greatest of artist-humanists, inveighed against cruelty in words that might have been written by Plutarch or Porphyry. His sympathies were with the vegetarian. Meanwhile, Northern Churchmen who went to Rome were scandalised to hear it said in high ecclesiastical society that there was no difference between the souls of men and beasts. An attempt was made to convert Erasmus to this doctrine by means of certain extracts from Pliny. Roman society, at that time, was so little serious that one cannot believe it to have been serious even in its heterodoxy. But speculations more or less of the same sort were taken up by men of a very different stamp; it was to be foreseen that animals would have their portion of attention in the ponderings of the god-intoxicated musers who have been called the Sceptics of the Renaissance. For the proof that they did receive it we have only to turn to the pages of Giordano Bruno. “Every part of creation has its share in being and cognition.” “There is a difference, not in quality, but in quantity, between the soul of man, the animal and the plant.” “Among horses, elephants and dogs there are single individuals which appear to have almost the understanding of men.”