Alexander Herzen,[49] who favoured the Panslavistic cause, could still speak, retrospectively, of Russian Czars as being "Robespierres on horseback"--an expression of so doubtful a value that it rather reminds us of the pseudo-revolutionary language of Napoleonism than of the purer Democratic principles. Herzen's idea being that Constantinople should become the capital of a great Russo-Slav Empire, we can easily understand that he should have represented Muscovite history under such a deceptive garb. Bakunin also was a Panslavist for a time, but of a different type, aiming as he did at a loose Democratic Federation of the various Slav tribes. The impossibility of this federation all those will acknowledge who think it equally chimerical to form a Romanic Federation between nations so dissimilar in origin, history, language, and aspirations, as are the Italians, the French, the Spaniards, the Portuguese, the French-speaking section of the Swiss, and the Roumans of Moldo-Wallachia and Hungary. Or would it be less chimerical to try to form a Teutonic Federation among Germans, Dutch, Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, Icelanders, German-Swiss, Englishmen, North Americans, and the various English colonies? Nihilism, on its part, has nothing in common with those Panslavist intrigues which mainly cover an Imperialist ambition. Nihilism, as at present known, is, in fact, the very negation of such dangerous ambitious schemes. The first Nihilist Society, properly speaking, is said to have been founded by Russian students about the year 1859. German works on philosophy and natural science were then much in demand, as forbidden fruit among the aspiring youths of Russia. The books not being allowed to pass the frontier, stray copies were smuggled in, and lithographed translations passed from hand to hand. The Agricultural College of Petrovski, near Moscow, is considered to have been one of the first places where young men became imbued with such advanced ideas. In this neighbourhood the Netchaieff tragedy was enacted. Among literary men, Tchernitcheffski was one of the first who became a "Nihilist." He suffered for it by being banished to Siberia.