At a shooting contest of this kind nothing is better calculated to dissipate everything in the shape of tedium than to have arrangements made for "running shooting" (as it is called) being carried on by those who are waiting their turn at the birdpole. A man who has to wait while sixty-nine other people slowly aim and shoot before his turn comes round, may find a good deal to amuse him if, during that time, he can load and aim at something of a less lofty kind--for instance, a Capuchin general. The "running" or "swing" shooting, as carried out at Kuhschnappel, differs in no respect from that of other places. A piece of canvas is hung up, and floats to and fro; there are painted dishes of edibles upon it, as on a table-cloth, and whoever puts a bullet through one of these paintings obtains the original--just as princes choose their brides from their portraits, before bringing home the brides in person; or as witches stick pins into a man's image in order to wound the prototype himself. The Kuhschnappelers were, on this occasion, shooting at a portrait on this canvas, which a great many persons considered to represent a Capuchin general. I know that there were some who, basing their opinion chiefly upon the red hat in the portrait, considered it to represent a cardinal, or cardinal-protector, but these have clearly, in the first place, got to settle the point with a third party, which differed from both of those above mentioned, holding that it portrayed the whore of Babylon--that is to say, a European one. From all of which we may form a pretty accurate estimate of the amount of truth contained in another rumour--which I contradicted in the first hour of its existence--namely, that the Augsburg people had taken offence at this effigy-arquebusading, and had written, in consequence, to the attorney-general representing that they felt themselves aggrieved, and that it was an injustice to one religion if, within the bounds of the holy Roman empire, a general of a religious order should be shot to shivers, without a Lutheran superintendent general being also shot to shivers at the same time. I should certainly have heard something further about this, if it had been anything but mere wind. Indeed, I have a shrewd suspicion that the whole story is no more than a false tradition, or garbled version of _another_ story, which a gentleman of rank belonging to Vienna recently _lied_ to me at table. What he said was, that in the more considerable towns of the empire, where the spirit-level of religious toleration has established a beautiful equilibrium between Papists and Lutherans, many had complained, on the part of the Lutherans, of the circumstance that although there were equal numbers of night-watchmen and censors (that is, transcendental night-watchmen), keepers of hotels, and keepers of circulating libraries of each communion, yet there were more Papists hanged than Lutherans; so that it was very clear, whether the Jesuits