From The Rhyme and Reason of Country Life, 1856.

"Who are the real?" from an 1886 advertisement.

Here's where crutches go when the lame walk and medicine bottles go when they've effected their cure, from Cured by an Incurable by Philip Bennett Power and illustrated by Edmund Fitzpatrick, 1888.

The spirits of night, from The Merry Ballads of the Olden Time, 1880.

The Milky Way, from Finland in the Nineteenth Century by Leopold Henrik Stanislaus Mechelin, 1894.

Here's the only way to fly, from Dicks' English Library of Standard Works, 1884.

From Nero: or, the Trials, Battles and Adventures of the Sixth Emperor of Rome by Horatio Hunt, 1893.

Whether particles or waves, sunbeams are carried by cherubs, as this ad from 1892 confirms.

From The Blue Poetry Book, edited by Andrew Lang, 1891.

This is as good an explanation of the weather as we've heard from any meteorologist, from The Gardeners' Chronicle, 1874.

From Fifty Perfect Poems, selected and edited by C. A. Dana and Rossiter Johnson (1882).

You've heard of carrying "coals to Newcastle," but here is revealed how they get there: via cherubs.  From Church Review, 1901.

From Goddelycke Wenschen, 1629.

An illustration from Across the Border by Edward Emmerson Oliver (1890).  The caption reads: "The Flying Throne of Star-taught Sulaimân."

A precursor to the Death Star's approach to Alderaan? From The Deer Smellers of Haunted Mountain by John J. Meyer (1921).  The caption reads: "Approaching the perfect world."