From The Poetical and Prose Works of Henry Kirke White, 1856.

From Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1859.

You've heard of cutting a deck.  From The Ball of Yarn, 1854.

"They never saw their child again."  From Simple Hans and Other Funny Pictures and Stories, 1854.

From Stories of the Governess by S. C. Hall, 1852.

How to transform into an octopus, Step One (apparently).  From The Illinois Teacher, 1855.

"Where scarce was footing for the goat."  From The Lady of the Lake by Walter Scott, 1853.

We commonly use Latin words, known as Lorem Ipsum, as dummy text, but back in the day, simple chicken scratch sufficed.  Our illustration appears in The Comedies, Histories, Tragedies, and Poems of William Shakspere, 1851.

From Report on the Geological Survey of Iowa, 1858.

An illustration from an 1853 issue of Punch magazine.

A precursor to the cult television series The Prisoner: Number Six hails a cab.  From Punch, 1853.

Here's a double-whammy: a precursor to René Magritte's The Treachery of Images as well as his The Son of Man.  From Punch, 1859, thirty-nine years before Magritte's birth.  (Previously re: Magritte.)