I refer to gardens, parks, lawns, and, in general, to pieces of land so situated that, were they left to grow up to weeds and briers, they would be eyesores and inconveniencies to all about.
They are therefore tilled, and though their product is little, there is yet no land that, in a wider sense, better repays cultivation.

So it is with the men and women with whom we mingle in the relations of society, whose voices are always in our ears, whose behavior in innumerable ways affects our enjoyment--who are, in fact, as much conditions of our lives as the air we breathe, or any of the physical elements on which we depend.

If, indeed, we could not afford to educate everybody, we should choose the coarsest and dullest by nature, rather than the brightest, to receive what education we could give.

The naturally refined and intellectual can better dispense with aids to culture than those less fortunate in natural endowments.
"To borrow a phrase which was often used in your day, we should not consider life worth living if we had to be surrounded by a population of ignorant, boorish, coarse, wholly uncultivated men and women, as was the plight of the few educated in your day.

Is a man satisfied, merely because he is perfumed himself, to mingle with a malodorous crowd?
Could he take more than a very limited satisfaction, even in a palatial apartment, if the windows on all four sides opened into stable yards?
And yet just that was the situation of those considered most fortunate as to culture and refinement in your day.