THE  SOCIALISM  OF  TO-DAY.

196
Origen.  I  visited  at  St.  Petersburg,  near  the  corn-market,  a
street  almost  exclusively  inhabited  by  small  bankers  belonging
to  this  eccentric  sect.  The  determination,  the  self-forgetfulness, ­
  the  audacity  of  the  Nihilists,  compared  with  whose  conspiracies ­
  the  plots  of  Carbonarism  are  merely  child’s  play,  are
a  fact  so  foreign  to  our  nature  that  we  can  hardly  understand  it
Yet  it  is  with  these  sentiments,  which  seem  so  contrary  to  nature,
that  Bakunin  has  succeeded  in  inspiring  his  partisans,  as  well  in
western  countries  as  in  his  native  land.  Is  it  not  strange  that
this  Muscovite,  whose  intelligence  and  learning  are  by  no
means  remarkable,  should  have  succeeded  in  originating  a
movement  of  ideas  which  plays  so  important  a  rôle  in  the
march  of  contemporary  events?  Not  only  is  he  the  father  of
Nihilism  in  Russia,  but  he  has  been  the  apostle  of  International
Anarchic  Socialism  throughout  the  south  of  Europe,  and  it  is
the  substance  of  his  doctrines  that  we  meet  in  those  of  the
Paris  Revolution  of  the  i8th  of  March.
Michael  Bakunin  was  born  in  1814,  in  the  government  of
Twer,  near  Moscow.  His  family  belongs  to  the  Russian  aristocracy. ­
  One  of  his  uncles  had  been  an  ambassador  under
Catherine  II.,  and  he  was  cousin  by  marriage  of  the  General
Muravieff,  whom  the  Poles  call  “  the  hangman  of  Poland.’
He  studied  at  the  School  of  Artillery  in  St.  Petersburg,  and
entered  the  service  as  an  officer.  Quartered  with  his  battery
in  the  Polish  provinces,  the  sight  of  the  régime  of  absolute
repression  to  which  these  provinces  were  subjected  filled  his
heart  with  the  hatred  of  despotism.  He  resigned  his  commission ­
  and  went  to  reside  at  Moscow,  where  he  studied
philosophy  with  Belinski.  Towards  1846  he  went  to  Germany,
where  Hegelian  ideas  captivated  him,  and  he  threw  himself
into  the  extreme  left  of  that  school  of  thought  in  which  a
powerful  revolutionary  leaven  was  then  fermenting.  In  1847
he  went  to  Paris,  where  he  met  George  Sand  and  1  roudhon  ;
but  he  was  soon  expelled  from  France,  probably  on  account  of
the  violence  of  his  speeches.  Returning  to  Germany,  he  took
an  active  part  in  the  insurrections  which  at  that  time  burst  forth
in  many  places,  and  in  the  spring  of  1849  he  was  one  of  the
leaders  of  the  rising  at  Dresden,  when  the  revolutionary  party