But how did such perfect sculpture spring up in this remote town of Galicia, contemporaneously with, if not earlier than, the best French work? “Pour former l’artiste,” says the writer we have been quoting, “il est besoin d’un public appréciateur, pénétrable au langage de l’art; pour former le public, il faut un art comprehensible, en harmonie âvec les idées du moment.” And what sort of a public had Santiago in those days. Was it not one of the most brilliant of the world’s intellectual centres? All this exquisite sculpture was produced during Galicia’s second Golden Age. In the Middle Ages there was a far stronger tie between the artist and the public than there is in our day. “Le moyen age n’aurait pas fait un si grand nombre de sculpteurs pour plaire a’ une coterie, l’art s’était democratisé autant qu’il pent l’être.” In our day art speaks only to the few, the chosen and the cultivated few, with money in their pockets. It is a dead language to four-fifths of the world, not because the people have rejected it, but because it has neglected the people. One of the glories of the lay schools of the thirteenth century, remarks Viollet le Duc, is the way in which they helped to spread art among the people. From the moment that you begin to teach the people that art is only for a caste, a select few, you cannot continue to spread it abroad. You cannot command taste. Art is a tree which can only spread and grow when it is given fair play. “Le régime féodal n’avait ni Acadèmies ni conseils de batiments civils, ni comités protecteurs des Arts.” In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries [Illustration: SCULPTURE IN THE CHAPEL BENEATH SANTIAGO CATHEDRAL] [Illustration: SCULPTURE IN THE CHAPEL BENEATH SANTIAGO CATHEDRAL] [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE CHAPEL BENEATH SANTIAGO CATHEDRAL PHOTOS. BY VARELA] there were no prizes, no medals to strive for, but art lived and flourished everywhere.