The forked branches of the trees stretched weird and imp-like as the hands of skeletons.

Polyphemus, peering over the rocks, had the leer of a demon; and in his gross features there was a certain distorted, hideous likeness of the grave and symmetrical lineaments of Olivier Dalibard.
All around was slovenly, squalid, and poverty-stricken,--rickety, worn-out, rush-bottom chairs; unsold, unfinished pictures, pell-mell in the corner, covered with dust; broken casts of plaster; a lay-figure battered in its basket-work arms, with its doll-like face all smudged and besmeared.

A pot of porter and a noggin of gin on a stained deal table, accompanied by two or three broken, smoke-blackened pipes, some tattered song-books, and old numbers of the "Covent Garden Magazine," betrayed the tastes of the artist, and accounted for the shaking hand and the bloated form.

A jovial, disorderly, vagrant dog of a painter was Tom Varney.

A bachelor, of course; humorous and droll; a boon companion, and a terrible borrower.