We left Laon in the coupé of a small diligence at 6 P.M. for Rheims, grateful in the extreme for the one fine day which we had as yet had--nowhere so grateful as here, where every turn disclosed some view or some subject of which a bright sun was the most indispensable adjunct.
Our going to Rheims afforded no incidents. When we crossed the hills from Laon and descended towards the broad valley of Champagne we had a most glorious view, simple in all its detail, but full of beautiful colour, and rich and verdant in the extreme. One small village we passed on the way had a church of which I managed to get a sketch while we changed horses. I went inside and found the whole church fitted with open seats on a raised wooden floor. The central tower is groined and has only a small apse to the east, and the effect of this inside is exceedingly good. The south aisle consists of a series of compartments running north and south, the roofs boarded on the under side and coved or canted, and descending not on arches across the aisle but on beams. The steeple was, I think, the only part groined. From this village to Rheims our journey was made in the dark and it was nearly eleven as we drove along under the shadow of the great walls of the cathedral and into the gate of the inn which faces its west front, where happily we found rest for our weary limbs....
It rained fast when I turned out early this morning and continued to do so perseveringly all the day. This was miserable and perhaps has made my recollection of Rheims less pleasant than it ought to be.
The west front with its three great doorways is very magnificent. The two steeples, which are developments from the Laon idea, and like Laon unfinished, are at present not large enough for the porch and look too much like turrets, and yet they are of immense size. The substitution of second-pointed mouldings in these steeples for the first-pointed shafts of those at Laon, is unfortunately not an improvement. The whole porch is covered in the most lavish manner with elaborate sculpture of the very finest character and detail, but it is generally spread over the whole surface and gives perhaps an effect of littleness and fritter to the whole front. The detail of the pinnacles and flying buttresses at the sides is unusually fine, and all of the same fine early middle-pointed date--that of the apse and the chapels surrounding it is equally fine. The northern transept is also a fine composition, but the parapets were intended to have flanking towers and these are carried up in the same way as those both at Rouen and Chartres, hardly on a sufficient scale to be looked on as towers. Their great open belfry windows produce a fine effect. The three doors of the north transept are all very fine, though the sculpture on some of them is of earlier date than that of the west front, and of very ingenious execution.