heir
dexterity in boating and extraordinary courage. Peter himself was a bold,
determined, and honest man, fond of a joke, and passionately devoted to
bees, birds, pigs, and dogs, many of whom (pigs especially) used to follow
him to Shields and Sunderland, when he went thither. After twenty-two
years' possession of the caverns, the proprietor of the adjoining land
served him with a process of ejectment; Peter refused to leave the
habitation which he had formed by twenty years' unremitting toil, and which
he had actually won from the sea, without encroachment on an inch of the
mainland. After a tedious law-suit, judgment was given in his favour, but
he had to pay costs. The anxieties of this lawsuit broke his heart, and he
never recovered either health or spirits. He died on the 31st of August,
1849, in the 51st year of his age, leaving his wife and eight children to
lament him. He was buried in Whitburn churchyard, and over his grave was
placed a stone with the inscription:

"The Lord is my rock and my salvation."

Numerous memorials of Peter exist at the grotto, and in the neighbourhood
of Marsden. Particulars of these and other matters touching this romantic
history, may be obtained in No. 2. of _Summer Excursions to the North_,
published by Ward, of Newcastle; and in a paper entitled _A Visit to
Marsden Rocks_, contributed by myself to the _Peoples Illustrated Journal_,
No. XIV.

SHIRLEY HIBBERD.

* * * * *

"COULD WE WITH INK," ETC.

(Vol. viii., pp. 127. 180. 422.)

I think that your well-read correspondent J. W. THOMAS will agree with me
that the _bona fide_ authorship of the beautiful lines alluded to must be
ascertained, not by a single expression, but by the whole of the charming
poem. The striking expression of Mohammed, quoted by J. W. THOMAS, is quite
common amongst the Easterns even at the present day. I remember, when at
Malta, in March, 1848, whilst walking in company of the most accomplished
Arabian of the day, the conversation turned upon a certain individual who
had since acquired a most unenviable notoriety in the annals of British
jurisprudence, my companion abruptly turned upon me, whilst at the shore of
the Mediterranean, and said, in his fascinating Arabic, "Behold this great
sea! were all its water turned into ink, it would be insufficient to
describe the villany of the individual you speak of."

Rabbi Mayir ben Isaac's poem corresponds not merely in a sin