ert was slightly built, nearly five feet in height; his face
was tanned, and his hands were burnt brown by the sun, giving him an
appearance of manly vigor, which, in fact, he did not possess. Indeed,
two months after he came to the college, when studying in the classroom
had faded his vivid, so to speak, vegetable coloring, he became as pale
and white as a woman.

His head was unusually large. His hair, of a fine, bright black in
masses of curls, gave wonderful beauty to his brow, of which the
proportions were extraordinary even to us heedless boys, knowing
nothing, as may be supposed, of the auguries of phrenology, a science
still in its cradle. The distinction of this prophetic brow lay
principally in the exquisitely chiseled shape of the arches under which
his black eyes sparkled, and which had the transparency of alabaster,
the line having the unusual beauty of being perfectly level to where it
met the top of the nose. But when you saw his eyes it was difficult to
think of the rest of his face, which was indeed plain enough, for their
look was full of a wonderful variety of expression; they seemed to have
a soul in their depths. At one moment astonishingly clear and piercing,
at another full of heavenly sweetness, those eyes became dull, almost
colorless, as it seemed, when he was lost in meditation. They then
looked like a window from which the sun had suddenly vanished after
lighting it up. His strength and his voice were no less variable;
equally rigid, equally unexpected. His tone could be as sweet as that of
a woman compelled to own her love; at other times it was labored, rough,
rugged, if I may use such words in a new sense. As to his strength, he
was habitually incapable of enduring the fatigue of any game, and seemed
weakly, almost infirm. But during the early days of his school-life,
one of our little bullies having made game of this sickliness, which
rendered him unfit for the violent exercise in vogue among his fellows,
Lambert took hold with both hands of one of the class-tables, consisting
of twelve large desks, face to face and sloping from the middle; he
leaned back against the class-master's desk, steadying the table with
his feet on the cross-bar below, and said:

"Now, ten of you try to move it!"

I was present, and can vouch for this strange display of strength; it
was impossible to move the table.

Lambert had the gift of summoning to his aid at certain times the most
extraordinary powers,