FROM investigations recently made as to the teaching of Dante in America it appears that, with one or two exceptions, Dante was not given a place in the college curriculum until the end of the nineteenth century. Indeed, the first teachers of Dante in this country were not university professors, but private individuals, and for the most part Italian exiles who resorted to the teaching of their own language and literature as a means of earning their livelihood. It is nevertheless true that a number of our higher institutions of learning contributed in the early days, though indirectly, to the diffusion of Dante studies in America, by co6perating with these teachers of Italian in their pioneer work. For we know that in many cases, when the demand for Italian, French, German, and Spanish was not yet large enough to warrant the appointment of a professor in any one of these fields, to such students as were interested in foreign languages the Faculty would recommend cultured foreigners from whom they could receive instruction at their own expense. So it was with Bowdoin College and with the University of Pennsylvania. In his Historical Sketch of the latter, John L. Stewart states that during the whole history of the University (established in 1749) there has been provision made with varying degrees of completeness, for such as desired to study French, German, Italian or Spanish. Such study was not required for a degree; nor were the professors members of the faculty. How large a number of students was reached by the teachers of Italian at that time it is of course impossible to say, but according to Lorenzo da Ponte it was considerable. For in his Autobiography he affirms that between the year 1807, which marks his arrival in America, and 1833, he alone instructed more than two thousand persons in the Italian language and literature, and, by means of public lectures, by his writings, and by importing into the United States from all parts of Europe over twenty-four thou-