; they have
become so through the bad education you have given them." "Pardon me,
General," was the answer of "Yankele Kovner" (Jacob Barit), who was one
of the representatives, "This is not quite right. As long as _we_
educated our children there were no nihilists among us; but as soon as
you took the education of our children into your hands, behold the
result." The foundations of religion were undermined. Parental authority
was disregarded. Youths and maidens were lured by the enchanting voice
of the siren of assimilation. The naive words which Turgenief put into
the mouth of Samuel Abraham, the Lithuanian Jew, might have been,
indeed, were, spoken by many others in actual life. "Our children," he
complains, "have no longer our beliefs; they do not say our prayers, nor
have they your beliefs; no more do they say your prayers; they do not
pray at all, and they believe in nothing."[27] The struggle between
Hasidim and Mitnaggedim ended with the conversionist policy of Nicholas
I, which united them against the Maskilim. The struggle between these
anti-Maskilim and the Maskilim had ceased in the golden days of
Alexander II. But the clouds were gathering and overspreading the camp
of Haskalah. The days in which the seekers after light united in one
common aim were gone. Russification, assimilation, universalism, and
nihilism rent asunder the ties that held them together. Judah Loeb
Gordon, the same poet who, fifteen years before, had rejoiced with
exceeding joy "when Haskalah broke forth like water," now laments over
the effect thereof in the following strain:

And our children, the coming generation,
From childhood, alas, are strangers to our nation--
Ah, how my heart for them doth bleed!
Farther and faster they are ever drifting,
Who knows how far they will be shifting?
Maybe till whence they can ne'er recede!

Amidst the disaffection, discord, and dejection that mark the latter
part of the reign of Alexander II, one Maskil stands out pre-eminently
in interest and importance,--one whom assimilation did not attract nor
reformation mislead, who under all the mighty changes remained loyal to
the ideals ascribed to the Gaon and advocated by Levinsohn,--Perez ben
Mosheh Smolenskin (Mohilev, February 25, 1842-Meran, Austria, February
1, 1885).[28]

Smolenskin was endowed with the ability and courage that characterize
the born leader. He possessed an iron will and unflinching
determination, before which obstac