a monk against his will, should turn layman.

In the peaceful convent of Saint Mark, among the Dominican brethren,
Beato Angelico's character and genius grew together; the devout artist
and the devotional mystic were inseparably blended in one man, and he
who is best remembered as a famous painter was chosen by a wise Pope to
be Archbishop of Florence, for his holy life, his gentle character and
his undoubted learning.

He could not refuse the great honour outright; but he implored the Pope
to bestow it upon a brother monk, whom he judged far more worthy than
himself. He was the same consistent, humble man who had hesitated to eat
meat at the Pope's own table without the permission of the prior of his
convent--a man who, like the great Saint Bernard, had given up a
prosperous worldly existence in pure love of religious peace. It was no
wonder that such a man should become the realist of the angels and a
sort of angel among realists--himself surnamed by his companions the
'Blessed' and the 'Angelic.'

Beside him, younger than he, but contemporary with him, stands out his
opposite, Filippo Lippi. He was not born rich, like Angelico. He came
into the world in a miserable by-way of Florence, behind a Carmelite
convent. His father and mother were both dead when he was two years old,
and a wretchedly poor sister of his father took care of him as best she
could till he was eight. When she could bear the burden no longer, she
took him to the door of the monastery, as orphans were taken in those
days, and gave him over to the charity of the Carmelite fathers. Most
of the boys brought to them in that way grew up to be monks, and some of
them became learned; but the little Filippo would do nothing but scrawl
caricatures in his copybook all day long, and could not be induced to
learn anything. But he learned to draw so well that when the prior saw
what he could do, he allowed him to paint; and at seventeen the lad who
would not learn to read or write knew that he was a great artist, and
turned his back on the monastery that had given him shelter, and on the
partial vows he had already taken. He was the wildest novice that ever
wore a frock. He had almost missed the world, since a little more
inclination, a little more time, might have made a real monk of him. But
he had escaped, and he took to himself all the world could give, and
revelled in it with every sensation of his gifted, sensuous nature. It
was only when he could not ge