Philip gilbert hamerton, an art critic of keen insight and wide reputation, whose writings are remarkable for their attractive style, was born in 1834 and died in 1894. The greater portion of his life was spent in France; the rest of it chie?y in one of the wildest and most beautiful parts of Scotland, where he lived as much as possible among his friends, the animals His wife says that he never could be without a dog, and the following words in which he prefaces the book (chapters on Animals, London, 1874) from which these pages are taken, together with the chapters themselves, will show what a warm lover and kind-hearted master animals had in him.