China and the West

Weston, Stephen. Fragments of Oriental literature [ID D26885].
Er schreibt : "The Chinese tongue is to an European, who has never been in China, and has no reason to go thither, more a language to be acquired by the eye, than the ear, and may be mastered for the purpose of knowing what it contains, if one has courage enough to scale the wall that surrounds it, and to force a way through the hedge of aloes, and prickly pears with which it is fences, by learning the mode of using its dictionaries, and by an acquaintance with its roots, or calves, of which there are of one line six, that is, one line may be written sic different ways."