According to the Swedish historians, who will not admit that the Danes were converted before themselves, Christianity had been embraced by many of the Goths many years antecedent to the arrival of St. Anscar. They assert that in 813 a church was erected at Linkoping, through the holy zeal of Herbert, a Saxon ecclesiastic. That the gospel was preached in Gothia before it reached Sweden, is probable enough; but we very much doubt whether the result was so great as the national writers would have us believe. However this be, St. Anscar was the first apostle of the Swiar. Reaching Birca, the capital—a place not far distant from the modern Stockholm—he converted some of king Biorn’s council, and was permitted to preach freely. This visit was auspicious; success appeared to be inevitable; but in the midst of his labours, after a residence of six months only, he and his companion returned to Germany. Why? To report what had been effected, says his biographer, Rembert, and to solicit further aid for prosecuting the great work. But it these objects were necessary (which we are unable to perceive), surely _one_ of them might have remained to confirm the new converts. Anscar was the bearer of a letter from Biorn to the emperor, written in runic characters, and bearing testimony to the success of the two monks. [Sidenote: 830 to 852.] The pope and the emperor were much gratified by the unexpected opening in the North. To reward Anscar, and stimulate him to greater exertions, he was made archbishop of Hamburg, with a jurisdiction over all the Scandinavian kingdoms, when he should have converted them to Christianity. In addition he was invested with the legatine authority over these regions; but it was shared with Ebbo, who knew less of the people, of their wants, and of their disposition, and who certainly had not either the zeal or the prudence of the other. One of Ebbo’s first acts was to consecrate a bishop, Gansbert, whom he dispatched into Sweden, while Anscar sent a vicar. It was evidently not the saint’s intention to return. He thought, and justly, that Denmark was a field sufficiently wide for his own exertions, and that he might superintend the Swedish mission from his new metropolis. That mission slowly but surely gained ground; while his own exertions in the more southern portion of his immense diocese corresponded, if not with his wishes, probably with his hopes. Both he and Gansbert, however, had the fault of all Roman catholic missionaries; they baptized before they had sufficiently instructed. Hence they had the mortification to see many of their converts join the worship of Odin and Thor with that of Christ; and many to forsake their new profession with as much levity as they had embraced it. Other misfortunes arrived. Hamburg was assailed by pirates: the sacred buildings were consumed by fire; the same fate attended the books which the saint had collected; and would, no doubt, have befallen