The nature of the recreation has been mentioned in a previous chapter. We sat and talked over coffee for half an hour, then discoursed peripatetically in the garden for half an hour. In some monasteries dominoes, bagatelle, &c., were introduced to escape the necessity of conversation; cards were forbidden, and chess was discountenanced (with complete success) on the ambiguous ground that the friars had no cerebral tissue to waste on intellectual games.
The conversation only merits description on account of the curiosity which is evinced with regard to it. Politics had the largest share in it, for all the friars were keen politicians, though they dared not openly manifest any political sympathy; they were all Liberals, but for the sake of argument one or other would attack or defend some point in a desultory fashion for an hour or more. Casuistry, too, gave them much food for discussion; and points of ritual and canon law were often discussed. In some friaries there would be one friar of a higher type who would start questions of living interest, but then the conversation was apt to degenerate into a pedantic and not very accurate monologue. But a vast amount of time was spent, as has frequently been suggested of them, in the most painful puerilities. Their sense of humour seems to have undergone an extraordinary degeneration; the more rational of them frequently express their disgust at the character of their ‘recreation.’ There are one or two powerful characters who habi-
