An adjoining apartment is devoted to some interesting antiquities, among which, are a court-dress of Charles II, a souvenir of his sojourn at Brussels during the ascendancy of Cromwell; a cloak of feathers, which belonged to Montezuma; the cradle in which Charles V. was rocked; and two stuffed horses which bore Albert and Isabella at the battle of Nieuport, one an Andalusian barb which had accompanied the Infanta from Spain, the other a Moravian which afterwards saved the life of the Archduke at the siege of Ostend in 1604. In the private mansions of Brussels there are numerous collections of pictures and objects of vertu, much more valuable than those which are the property of the nation. Those of the Duke d’Aremberg, the Prince de Ligne, M. Maleck de Werthenfels, and the Count Vilain XIV, contain several masterpieces of the Dutch and Flemish masters, and some few by Raphael Leonardo de Vinci, and the chiefs of the Italian school. The name of this latter gentleman is somewhat remarkable; his ancestor, who was ennobled by Louis XIV, being permitted to append the cypher of the monarch to his name and that of his descendants. The collection of the Duke d’Aremberg, besides a number of paintings of great excellence, contains a remarkable marble, which has excited much curious investigation amongst the dilettanti; it is a head, the fragment of a statue, which _is said_ to have originally belonged to the main figure in the group of the Laocoon in the Vatican, the present head being only a restoration. The truth of this is questioned, but the connoisseurs attached to Napoleon were so satisfied of its truth, that the Emperor, by their advice, offered the possessor, weight for weight, gold for marble, if he would allow the head to resume its ancient position on the shoulders of the statue which was then in the gallery of the Louvre. The Duke, unwilling to part with it, declined, but aware of the determined nature of Napoleon’s caprices, sent it privately out of the country, and had it concealed at Dresden till the fall of the Emperor, when it was restored to its old place in the library of the Palais d’Aremberg. That the head of the central figure in the group of the Vatican is a restoration, there can be no doubt; it was copied, it is said, from an antique gem. The head at Brussels, was found by some Venetian explorers, and sold to the father or grandfather of the present Duke d’Aremberg. Whether it be the genuine original or not, no possible doubt can be entertained of its masterly execution, and the vigour and fire of expression with which it glows, justify any opinion in favour of its origin.