The Brides of Ardmore : a Story of Irish Life.
By Agnes Smith. (Elliot Stock.)—Miss Smith has produced a carefully studied and interesting picture of Irish ecclesiastical life, before it had been assimilated to Roman rule by the English conquest in the twelfth century. "The Brides of Ardmore " are the wives of Irish Bishops, who were not, as the writer explains, the dignified ecclesiastics of other divisions of Christendom (St. Patrick himself ordained seven hundred), but something like parish priests, and who held to the Apostolic rule that a Bishop should be "the husband of one wife." The description of their simple domestic life, not without its tinge of culture, and the tragic ending of the story, when Rome uses the English sword to assert her supremacy and to bring about her uni- formity, are given with no inconsiderable power. The style would be better, here and there, for a little amendment. What can be meant when we read of one Amada that, "although stoutly built, and habited in a garment of dark wool, there was about her that air of comfort," &c. ? What could better harmonise together than a stout build with a garment of dark wool and an air of comfort ? The
English invaders of Ireland seem, among their other misdeeds, to have been responsible for the loss of the surviving portions of Tacitus,. and of the plays of Menander. So the author hints (p. 330).
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