In the midst of seeing the cathedral we walked to St. Remi, a mile, taking the ramparts. They offer a good view of the cathedral, and one of the country round, like Wiltshire, but backed by fine hills to the south; but in this open country, and along all that line of hills, the famous vine of champagne flourishes. St. Remi is an immense church, 350 feet long, besides the Lady Chapel: Norman, with pointed arches; the choir with its stained windows very good; seven in the apse. The tomb of St. Remi was under repair; it is between the high altar and the east end; so the statues of the twelve peers were ranged six on one side and six on the other side of the great altar _pro tempore_. This church is a very grand and fine one, and, except in the presence of the cathedral, would take a day to see. Its west front has been strangely tampered with, but reminds one still, especially the turrets, of St. Georges de Boscherville; but this is greatly the more spacious church of the two. We spent all the day in going about, passing through the internal galleries of the cathedral; the curve in the nave is very perceptible. The roof was poorly painted for the sacre of Charles X. with white fleurs de lis on a blue ground; it is very massive in its vaulting, the pitch, perhaps, not perfectly agreeable to the eye. We had a letter from M. D'Alzon to the Archbishop, but he had left Reims a day or two before; we had another from M. Gaduel to the Supérieur of the Séminaire, which _M._ took in the afternoon. About 8 o'clock we both went there, and had some talk with him and the professors, one of whom, M. Lassaigne, gave us a translation of Gioberti against Cousin, and recommended me Le Prêtre Juge et Medicin dans le Tribunal de la Penitence, which I got. I gathered from their discourse that confession is the great chain which holds together the whole Christian life; it is practised weekly by the pupils: communion is entirely free. A great many priests of the neighbourhood confess still to the supérieur (M. Aubry), their old teacher: forty he said. I asked them if they could conceive a Christian life maintained without confession: they said, hardly; that it was involved in our Lord's words, "whose sins ye do retain," &c., which power could only be exercised upon each individual case, after knowledge of the facts, such as of course can only be obtained by auricular confession. I alleged to the Supérieur the strong expressions often used to the Virgin Mary, instancing "les satisfactions infinies du Fils de Dieu et de sa Mère:" he condemned them and _this_. I spoke of St. Bonaventure's Psalter; he did not seem acquainted with it, and regretted that I did not stay till the morrow, when he would have gone over it with me, and weighed the words. But at last he said, St. Bonaventure is not the Church, though he is a saint and doctor of it. They were very kind and cordial, and I should have liked to see more of them.