The chief curiosity, if not the chief ornament of a very elegant
library, filled with vases and bronzes, is a marble head, supposed to
be the original head of the Laocoon. It is, unquestionably a finer head
than that which at present figures upon the shoulders of the famous
statue. The expression of woe is more manly and intense; in the group as
we know it, the head of the principal figure has always seemed to me to
be a grimace of grief, as are the two accompanying young gentlemen
with their pretty attitudes, and their little silly, open-mouthed
despondency. It has always had upon me the effect of a trick, that
statue, and not of a piece of true art. It would look well in the vista
of a garden; it is not august enough for a temple, with all its jerks
and twirls, and polite convulsions. But who knows what susceptibilities
such a confession may offend? Let us say no more about the Laocoon, nor
its head, nor its tail. The Duke was offered its weight in gold, they
say, for this head, and refused. It would be a shame to speak ill of
such a treasure, but I have my opinion of the man who made the offer.

In the matter of sculpture almost all the Brussels churches are
decorated with the most laborious wooden pulpits, which may be worth
their weight in gold, too, for what I know, including his reverence
preaching inside. At St. Gudule the preacher mounts into no less a place
than the garden of Eden, being supported by Adam and Eve, by Sin and
Death, and numberless other animals; he walks up to his desk by a
rustic railing of flowers, fruits, and vegetables, with wooden peacocks,
paroquets, monkeys biting apples, and many more of the birds and
beasts of the field. In another church the clergyman speaks from out a
hermitage; in a third from a carved palm-tree, which supports a set of
oak clouds that form the canopy of the pulpit, and are, indeed, not much
heavier in appearance than so many huge sponges. A priest, however tall