interests were developed in German citizen life, which, however
unsatisfactory they may be, form an immeasurable step in advance of the
olden time. There is also a fundamental difference in culture which
distinguishes us from our ancestors; but this difference does not rest
on the necessary progress of a later race. We feel that the old
brotherhood of cities and districts had something noble in it, in which
our life is very deficient. The joyful self-assertion of man in social
intercourse with others, the facility with which common usages unite
together hundreds and indeed thousands, and, above all, the imposing
vigour with which cities asserted their position, all this has been too
long wanting to us. If it was seldom granted to our forefathers to
feel, on the great occasions of life, the unity of German interests in
Church and State, and through a common action and great triumph to
ennoble the life of every individual, yet they knew at least how to
open, by their fellowship, a domain in which expression was given to
the German nature, to human relations and to community of spirit.

It is only within a few years that it has become a necessity to Germans
to expand their life in this direction. It was no mere accident that
made German men of science, in their wandering meetings, the first to
give significant expression to some of the noblest interests of the
nation by national association. They were followed by the singers and
others, then the gymnasts, finally the shooters. We are now, after more
than two centuries of preparation, again treading in the same path in
which our ancestors so grandly trod, but with a freer and nobler
feeling. It has been a long-denied pleasure for us thus to be able to
vaunt ourselves. But we should at the same time be mindful, and it is
the object of these pages to remind us, that the citizen-class of
Germany has striven, for more than two centuries since the Thirty
Years' War, to become again as powerful and manly in this respect as
their ancestors were.

But even of that time of weakness, the century that followed the great
war, a picture shall be given. But it must be short. The hospitable
prize-shootings of the cities had ceased; here and there a ruler gave a
family festival, or, as a special act of grace, a large country
shooting meeting, at which prizes were awarded, and their subjects
allowed to participate. In the cities the old shooting associations
still existed, though in many