Later, a novelist of talent, Reuben Asher Braudes, resumed the attempt to harmonize theory and practice, in his great novel, "Religion and Life". The hero, the young Rabbi Samuel, is the picture of Lilienblum. From the point of view of art, it is one of the best novels in Hebrew literature. Life in the rural districts, the austere idealism of the enlightened, the superstitions of the crowd, are depicted with extraordinary clearness of outline. [Footnote: _Ha-Dat weha- Hayyim_, Lemberg, 1880. Another long novel by Braudes is called _Shete ha-Kezawot_ ("The Two Extremes"), published in 1886, wherein he extols the national revival and religious romanticism.] The novel ran in _Ha-Boker Or_ (1877-1880), and was never completed--a counterpart of its hero. Had not Lilienblum, too, stopped in the middle of the road? The crisis that occurred in the life of Lilienblum, torn from his ideal speculations in a provincial town, and forced into contact with an actuality that was as far as possible away from solving the problem of harmonizing religion and life, was the typical fate of all the educated Jews of the period. Lilienblum and his followers gave themselves up to regrets over the futile work of three generations of humanists, who, instead of restoring the ghetto to health, had but hastened its utter ruin. The ideal aspirations of the Maskilim had been succeeded by a gross utilitarianism without an ideal. What disquieted the soul of the Maskil in the decade from 1870 to 1880 is expressed in the concluding words of "The Sins of Youth": "The young people are to work at nothing and think of nothing but how to prepare for their own life. All is forbidden, wherefrom they cannot derive direct profit--they are permitted only the study of sciences and languages, or apprenticeship to a trade. "The youth who break away from the laborious study of the Talmud, throw themselves with avidity into the study of modern literature. This headlong course has been in vogue with us about a century. One generation disappears, to make place for the next, and each generation is pushed forward by a blind force, no one knows whither...! "It is high time for us to throw a glance backward--to stop a moment and ask ourselves: Whither are we hastening, and why do we hasten?"....