text:  Had we to draw a picture of domestic felicity on the Rhine we would sketch it thus:--a summer evening--a flower garden--a table with tea or coffee--a dozen chairs occupied by persons of both sexes--the women big-feeted blue-eyed placid creatures knitting stockings--the men heavy and awkward each with a monstrous signet-ring on the dirty forefinger of his right hand smoking unceasingly and puffing the vapour into the faces of their better halves who heed it not and occasionally may even be seen replenishing with their own delicate digits the enormous porcelain or meerschaum bowls of the pipes