REV. JAMES LEGGE, D. D. L.L. D.
I spent a fortnight at the house of R. F. Hawke, Esq., whose father-in-law, the Rev. Dr. Legge, the eminent Chinese scholar, was engaged on his five or six large volumes of the Chinese classics. The Doctor is not impressed with the intellectual ability of Confucius nor of his followers. His translations are invaluable, as saving missionaries and other students of the Chinese much pains by placing Chinese literature before them in a digested form. One could not help regretting that this laborious scholar cannot have the advantage of an international copyright law to afford protection to his costly fruits of research. American authors suffer the same loss, however, as he, in seeing their valuable works appropriated by foreigners.