It would seem that deep and thoughtful minds, like deep waters, must have a gloom in them, and that ideal life leads to turbulence of soul. Nathaniel Hawthorne, endowed by Nature with an acute and subtle intellect, always suffered more or less from a morbid sensibility. Even in his youth, like Burns, he was oppressed by fits of deep dejection, which gave his friends much anxiety. His order of genius was of the highest; of that there is no doubt. His style is simple, graceful, and forcible, with a power to awaken intense interest in the characters which he delineated. The "Scarlet Letter" is perhaps the best known and most popular of his several productions; and much of the same half-suppressed, feverish excitement is realized in its perusal as in a degree characterized Hawthorne himself. His most prominent trait as an author lay in his originality and power of analysis.[152] Insanity is often the result of an overtasked sensitive brain wandering in the realms of fancy. Like a high-mettled horse, it sometimes throws the rider,--as in the instance of Cowper, Collins, and others already spoken of in these pages. Charles Fenno Hoffman, the ripe scholar, poet, and novelist, conceded to be one of the best song-writers we have had in America, was bereft of reason and died the inmate of an insane asylum, where the last quarter of his life was passed. While yet a boy, Hoffman met with an accident so serious as to render necessary the amputation of one of his legs, and thenceforth he was obliged to go with a wooden one. Béranger, like De Foe, was at one period the prime favorite of the Court, and presently was languishing within the dreary walls of the Bastile, where he wrote some of his most effective poems. Contemporary with Béranger was Alfred de Musset, a poet and littérateur of rare excellence, possessed of a flow of poetical genius characterized by passion, vivacity, and grace, notwithstanding that a morbid, misanthropic frame of mind consumed him in secret. His youthful liaison with George Sand is familiar to us all, and no doubt it left a weird influence upon his life. When De Musset received money he would squander it in the most reckless dissipation, then live on bread and onions until he earned another supply, to be lavished in the same manner. He was the intimate friend of the Duke of Orleans, Victor Hugo, and other notable men, but deliberately chose the debasing career of a drunkard, and died at the premature age of forty-seven, a victim to the demon of alcohol.