Mikhail Bakunin praised Buonarroti as "the greatest conspirator of his age", and was heavily influenced by the revolutionary practice of Buonarroti. The Bakunin scholar Arthur Lehning has written of Buonarroti: “He too built up on an international scale, though over a much longer period, an elaborate underground network, on a freemason pattern, sometimes using Masonic institutions, to work for his egalitarian creed of 1796, for a social revolution and for the republicanisation of Europe. For forty years the principles remained the same: the leadership was secret; the existence of the higher grades was unknown to the lower; protean in character, this network took advantage of and used other societies.” Some argue that these principles are clearly evident in Bakunin's writings.