All the above-mentioned poets belong to what might be termed the German school. These men were more or less intimately acquainted with German literature, and frequently borrowed their subject-matter from that source. They all were active at a time when the conflict between the old religious life of the Russian Jews and the modern tendencies was at the highest. They looked for a solution in the reform which, since the days of Mendelssohn, has become the watchword of progress in Germany. They hoped finally to substitute even the German language for the Judeo-German, which they regarded as a corrupted form of German, and, therefore, named Jargon, an appellation that has stuck to it ever since. In the meanwhile, the better classes were receiving their instruction in Russian schools that alienated them alike from the German influence and from a closer contact with their humble coreligionists. Even such men as had begun in the forties and fifties as folk-poets, were abandoning their homely dialect for the literary language of the country. Jehuda Loeb Gordon, the Hebrew scholar and poet, had given promise of becoming the greatest of popular singers. Yet, in the seventies, he wrote only in Hebrew and Russian, and it was only in the eighties, when the riots and expatriations of the Jews had destroyed all hopes that had been placed in assimilation, that he returned to compose songs for the consolation of his humble and unfortunate brothers.[56] J. L. Gordon has written but few Judeo-German poems, and, of these, not more than nine or ten are folksongs; but they represent the highest perfection of the older school of the popular bards. He has not been surpassed by any of them in simplicity of diction, warmth of feeling, and purity of language. Two of his oldest poems, 'A Mother's Parting,' and 'A Story of Long-Ago,' relate, the first, the hardships of a Jewish soldier in the forties; the second, the horrors of the regime of _Chapers_, the dishonesty and inhumanity of the _Kahal_, the representative body of the Jewish community. The newer poems are all of a humoristic nature, except the one devoted to the praise of 'The Law Written on Parchment' that has been the consolation of the Jews during their many wanderings and persecutions.