Page:Selected Orations Swedish Academy 1792.djvu/98

98 with with avidity. Let those who govern the nations learn, as those who are blessed with genius must feel, that the human race will in the end obtain, by means of the arts, that tranquillity after which they have so long and so vainly aspired.

you, Gentlemen, I behold the agents of this inestimable advantage: philosophy, politics, oratory, poesy, have no treasures of which some of you are not masters. Moulded by your skilful hands, our language recedes more and more from its ancient rudeness. We have seen it bend to the subtile graces of the most refined raillery, we have examples of its following the tempestuous career of passion, and soaring to the most sublime flights of imagination. As with ornaments, it is with languages; they are becoming only on beautiful objects.