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The original description, on the next page of the newspaper, reads:

SCENE FROM "AGES AGO." The new entertainment, entitled "Ages Ago," recently produced at the Royal Gallery of Illustration, does much credit both to Mr. and Mrs. German Reed, and to Mr. W. S. Gilbert, the author. It is one of those rare works that contain an idea. There is but one scene, but that comprehends many possible evolutions. It is of a picture gallery in an old castle, called Glen Cockaleekie, now in possession of Sir Ebenezer Tare, a rich tallow-chandler, who is troubled on account of the attentions paid to his daughter by a young gentleman of good family, but poor. The old housekeeper, however, has taken the lovers under her protection, and endeavours to possess them with the superstitions by which she is herself so powerfully influenced. These relate to the original owners of the castle. Its first tenant, it seems, bound himself to a fiend by a contract requiring that the castle should have a legitimate owner but once in a hundred years. The time has now arrived for such an event to happen, and that very night it is expected. All the inmates of the castle have retired to rest, and now the supernatural work begins. The pictures on the walls become animated in their frames, and the persons they represent descend and become performers in a living drama. Lady Maud de Bohun leads off the action, suddenly recollecting that she was painted, for a few marks, by a Messer Leonardo da Vinci, a young promising artist, and wondering at the changes made in the castle since her death. Sir Aubrey de Beaupré, also, who was painted by Titian, shares in the conversation, and apologisres for one of his hands being out of drawing, it having been restored by an R.A. Next, Lord Carnaby Poppytop, painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller, steps from the wall, and, with a cough, interferes with the dialogue. Becoming rivals for the lady they fight; when Dame Cherry Maybud descends, and reproves Lord Carnaby for wishing to marry his grandmother. This part of the scene is the subject of our illustration. Ultimately the portraits return to their frames, and the love affair of the introductory scene is amicably settled in the concluding one.