"A poetical ruin," from Love Lyrics and Valentine Verses by Charles Maurice Davies, 1875.

An illustration from an 1855 issue of Punch magazine.

"The crystal ball turned inky black."  From Strange Stories, April 1939.

From The Middle Kingdom: A Survey of the Chinese Empire and Its Inhabitants by Samuel Wells Williams, 1883.

From The Baby's Museum by Uncle Charlie, 1882.

"He is here now. Wicked doubter—beware!"  From The Land of the Living Dead by Neal Fyne, 1897.

"They danced in the moonlight on the sward," from Bladys of the Stewponey by Sabine Baring-Gould and illustrated by Frederick Henry Townsend, 1897.

"I was touched," from Roughing It by Mark Twain.

Clouds are named after bird formations, as we learn in Aide-mémoire du Voyageur by D. Kaltbrunner, 1881.  [For Gary Barwin.]

The first illustration below is from Poets' Wit and Humour by William Henry Wills, 1882.  The second is from Departmental Ditties by Rudyard Kipling, 1898, and its caption reads, "Pagett was dear to mosquitos, sandflies found him a treat." 

"We must wish," from A Missing Witness by Frank Barrett, 1897.

"Cross, cadaverous, odd, and ill-natured," from The Works of Charles Dickens, Household Edition.

From The Man in the Moon, Volume V.

"He melts, I think.  He goes like a drop of froth.  You look at him, and there he is.  You look at him again, and—there he isn't."  From The Works of Charles Dickens, Household Edition.

You've heard of sticking inhuman pins into a voodoo doll, but the old-school sticks human pins into a pseudo doll.  From The Baby's Museum by Uncle Charlie, 1882.

From Leslie's Fate; and Hilda, or the Ghost of Erminstein by Andrew Charles Parker Haggard, 1892.

From Thackerayana, 1875.

Here's a precursor to Arrested Development's Tobias wondering what his daughter is thinking.  The subtitle reads, "She lives her life, and I get the pleasure of guessing what that might entail."  The precursor appears in The Lady's Manor by Emma Marshall, 1896.  Its caption reads, "What is my little girl thinking about?"