As soon as the presentations were over, the Grand Duke led out the wife of the English ambassador, and opened the ball with a waltz. He then danced a quadrille with the wife of the French ambassador, and for his next partner selected an _American lady_--the daughter of Colonel T----, of New York. The supper rooms were opened early, and among the delicacies of a table loaded with everything rare and luxurious, were a brace or two of pheasants from the Duke's estates in Germany. Duly flavored with _truffes_, and accompanied with Rhine wines, which deserved the conspicuous place given them upon the royal table--and in this letter. I hardly dare speak of the degree of _beauty_ in the assembly; it is so difficult to compare a new impression with an old one, and the thing itself is so indefinite. But there were two persons present whose extreme loveliness, as it is not disputed even by admiring envy, may be worth describing, for the sake of the comparison. The Princess S---- may be twenty-four years of age. She is of the middle height, with the slight stoop in her shoulders, which is rather a grace than a fault. Her bust is exquisitely turned, her neck slender but full, her arms, hands, and feet, those of a Psyche. Her face is the abstraction of highborn Italian beauty--calm, almost to indifference, of an indescribably _glowing paleness_--a complexion that would be alabaster if it were not for the richness of the blood beneath, betrayed in lips whose depth of color and fineness of curve seem only too curiously beautiful to be the work of nature. Her eyes are dark and large, and must have had an indolent expression in her childhood, but are now the very seat and soul of feeling. A constant trace of pain mars the beauty of her forehead. She dresses her hair with a kind of characteristic departure from the mode, parting its glossy flakes on her brow with nymph-like simplicity, a peculiarity which one regrets not to see in the too Parisian dress of her person. In her manner she is strikingly elegant, but without being absent, she seems to give an unconscious attention to what is about her, and to be gracious and winning without knowing or intending it, merely because she could not listen or speak otherwise. Her voice is sweet, and, in her own Italian, mellow and soft to a degree inconceivable by those who have not heard this delicious language spoken in its native land. With all these advantages, and a look of pride that nothing could insult, there is an expression in her beautiful face that reminds you of her sex and its temptations, and prepares you fully for the history which you may hear from the first woman that stands at your elbow.