Page:Monthly scrap book, for May.pdf/18

18 THE MONTHLY city; and several partisans of the cardinal armed themselves with intent to scale the walls. When they were told of his death they desisted, and the people insisting upon a sight of the cardinal's body, his corpse was exposed to their view from the very same place wherein he sat to behold the execution of George Wishart.

A WALK IN MAY.

I chanced to rise very early one particular morning this summer, and took a walk into the country, to divert myself among the fields and meadows, while the green was new, and the flowers in their bloom. As at this season of the year every lane is a beautiful walk, and every hedge full of nosegays, I lost myself with a great deal of pleasure among several thickets and bushes that were filled with a great variety of birds, and an agreeable confusion of notes, which formed the pleasantest scene in the world to one who had passed a whole winter in noise and smoke. My pleasure, however, was somewhat interrupted by the appearance to the windward of me of a black cloud falling to the earth in long trails of rain, which made me betake myself for shelter to a house which I saw at a little distance from the place where I was walking. As I sat in the porch, I heard the voices of two or three persons, who seemed very earnest in discourse. My curiosity was raised when I heard the names of Alexander the Great and Artaxerxes; and as their talk seemed to run on ancient heroes, I concluded there could not be any secret