An academical ball is something quite different from other balls; for besides all the merits of a distinguished meeting, it had the three excellences of German scholarship--industry, freedom, and indifference: industry in dancing, even in the case of the gentlemen, freedom in agreeable intercourse between young and old, and indifference to uniforms and patent leather pumps. Of course, the young people even here bore a cosmopolitan character, for the same modes of dancing, dresses, nosegays, and courtesies, glancing eyes and blushing cheeks, can be found at a thousand similar festivals from the Neva to California; but any one who was more observant might perceive in the faces of many of the girls the intellectual eyes and eloquent lips that descended to them from their learned fathers, and perhaps certain little academical peculiarities in curls and ribbons. The old saying which came from a past generation of students, that professors' daughters are either pretty or homely, commended itself here also to the notice of observers, the ordinary mixture of both qualities being rare. Besides a few officers and the flower of the city youth, there might be seen among the dancers here and there a young scholar, thin and pale, with smooth lank hair, more fitted to bend thoughtfully over books than to float about in the giddy dance. But what gave its value to this festival was, not the young people, but the middle aged gentlemen and ladies. Among the elderly gentlemen with grey hair and joyful countenances who stood together in groups or sauntered pleasantly among the ladies, were many important faces, with delicate features, brisk, animated, and cheerful demeanor. Among the ladies there were not a few who, the rest of the year, moved noiselessly about the studies of their husbands and the nursery, and who now saw themselves displayed in unwonted gala-dress under the bright glare of lights, and were as shy and bashful as they had been long ago in their maiden days.