Perhaps there are no people so completely enslaved by habit as those who are only moved by impulse. Persons who have fixed principles of action govern their lives by those principles, and habits are only the secondary forms which those motives assume. But when a man is thoroughly impulsive, and only to be stirred through some strong emotion, a large part of his life must be controlled through the unconscious agency of circumstance and habit, unless, indeed, he should be one of those human volcanoes, occasionally to be met with, who are never in repose except the moment after an explosion. Hubert Woodley was a perfect exemplification of the apparently anomalous fact that a man may have noble and generous impulses yet be involved in a net-work of selfish habits. The selfishness which he had inherited from both parents was overlaid by so much that seemed good and beautiful in his nature, that its existence was utterly unsuspected by every one, and certainly unknown to himself. Yet it was this very quality which had made him ambitious at first of the renown of the scholar, and afterward of the fame of the painter, and now actuated him to seek after great wealth. Self was the soil in which every thing grew, even the herbs of grace, which embellished and concealed the base source from whence they sprung. Hubert loved Minnie as well as he could love any one beside himself, but he knew nothing of that affection which makes self a forgotten idea, and concentrates the whole being upon another. His love had been a fancy growing out of the novelty of finding so sweet a flower in such an ungenial spot. Then the desire of approbation, which had always been a latent propensity with him, stimulated him to make love to her. The vague stirrings of passion, the necessity of some habitual stimulus to make home endurable, and the cravings of an unoccupied heart made up the rest of those mixed motives which led him first to stir the quiet depths of Minnie’s half-frozen soul. He enjoyed the excitement of her feelings, just as one might enjoy their first glass of champagne. His brain was not in the least bewildered, but the effervescence gave him a new and pleasurable sensation. He liked to hear the hurrying of her quiet footsteps as she came forward to meet him at the door; he loved to see the flitting blush come over her pale face when he took her hand in his; and it was with a sort of epicurean pleasure he felt the trembling of her shrinking frame as with an excess of maiden reserve she would glide from his encircling arm in some moment of endearment. But never once did Hubert reflect on the rights which all these things were gradually giving her over him. Never did he consider that those quiet depths of affection which but for him would have been sealed forever, were now destined to become a fountain of sweetness, or a pool of bitter waters, according as he directed their flow.