two Yiddish and
three Hebrew dailies, besides several weekly, monthly, and quarterly
periodicals and annuals in Yiddish, Hebrew, and Russian, notwithstanding
the fact that a numerous class depended on the general Russian literary
output for their mental pabulum.

As the number of those who read Hebrew was still considerable, Abraham
Loeb Shalkovich (Ben Avigdor) began, with the assistance of a number of
Maskilim, the publication of "penny literature" (Sifre Agorah, Warsaw,
1893). Shortly afterwards the Ahiasaf Society and, a little later, the
Tushiyah Society were founded. The object was to edit and publish "good
and useful books in the Hebrew language for the spread of knowledge and
the teaching of morality and culture among the Hebrew youth, also
scientific books in all departments of learning." Both these
associations have done admirable work. They have published many good
text-books for teaching Hebrew and Jewish history, an illustrated
periodical for children, Olam Katan (The Little World), and numerous
works of interest to the adult. Among their publications were, besides
the original writings of Peretz, Taviov, Frischman, Berdichevsky,
Chernikhovsky, and others, also translations from Bogrov, Byron, Frug,
Hugo, Nordau, Shakespeare, Spencer, Zangwill, Zola, critical biographies
of Aristotle, Copernicus, George Eliot, Heine, Lassalle, Nietzsche,
Rousseau, and a great many equally famous men of letters, which followed
each other in promiscuous but uninterrupted succession, all handsomely
printed and prettily bound, and sold at a moderate price.

One evil, however, remained, in the face of which both the Maskilim and
the financiers found themselves utterly helpless, the evil of the
exclusion of Jews from the universities. They could found elementary and
high schools for the young, night schools and Sabbath Schools for the
adult working-men, but to establish a university was an absolute
impossibility. Jewish youths were again compelled, as in the days of
Tobias Cohn and Solomon Maimon, to seek in foreign lands the education
denied them in their own. Austria, Switzerland, France, and chiefly
Germany, became once more the Meccas whither Russo-Jewish graduates
repaired to finish their studies, and where they formed a sort of Latin
Quarters of their own, and led almost a communal life. Their numbers in
the German universities grew to such proportions, and their material
condition became so wretched, that a society was or