Next to Thingvalla, there is no place in Iceland so replete with historical interest as Skalholt, its ancient capital. Here in the eleventh century was founded the first school in the island; here was the seat of its first bishops; here flourished a succession of great orators, historians, and poets; Isleif, the oldest chronicler of the North; Gissur, who in the beginning of the twelfth century had visited all the countries of Europe and spoke all their languages; the philologian Thorlak, and Finnur Johnson, the learned author of the “Ecclesiastical History of Iceland.” The Cathedral of Skalholt was renowned far and wide for its size, and in the year 1100, Latin, poetry, music, and rhetoric, the four liberal arts, were taught in its school, more than they were at that time in many of the large European cities. As a proof how early the study of the ancients flourished in Skalholt, we find it recorded that in the twelfth century a bishop once caught a scholar reading Ovid’s “Art of Love;” and as the story relates that the venerable pastor flew into a violent passion at the sight of the unholy book, we may without injustice conclude that he must have read it himself in some of his leisure hours, to know its character so well. Of all its past glories, Skalholt has retained nothing but its name. The school and the bishopric have been removed, the old church has disappeared, and been replaced by a small wooden building, in which divine service is held once a month; three cottages contain all the inhabitants of the once celebrated city, and the extensive churchyard is the only memorial of its former importance. Close by are the ruins of the old school-house, and on the spot where the bishop resided a peasant has erected his miserable hovel. But the ever-changing tide of human affairs has not bereft the now lonely place of its natural charms, for the meadow-lands of Skalholt are beautifully imbedded in an undulating range of hills, overlooking the junction of the Bruara and Huita, and backed by a magnificent theatre of mountains, among which Hecla and the Eyjafialla are the most prominent. Reykjavik, the present capital of the island, has risen into importance at the expense both of Skalholt and Thingvalla. At the beginning of the present century the courts of justice were transferred from the ancient seat of legislature to the new metropolis, and in 1797 the bishoprics of Hoolum and Skalholt, united into one, had their seats likewise transferred to Reykjavik. The ancient school of Skalholt, after having first migrated to Bessestadt, has also been obliged to follow the centralizing tendency, so powerful in our times, and now contributes to the rising fortunes of the small sea-port town.