In the respectable work called The Beauties of England, this remarkable circumstance is quoted from _Walsingham_ relating to the river Ouse—That on the first of January 1399 it suddenly ceased to flow between the villages of Snelson and Harrold near Bedford, leaving its channel so bare of water that the people walked at the bottom for full three miles. {8} So strange a phenomenon seems not very easy to account for. It is said to have been for a long time considered as _ominous_ of those dire dissentions and bloody wars which the opposite claims of the rival Houses of York and Lancaster shortly afterward occasioned. Nor is it at all wonderful that such an idea should gain credit in those dark and superstitious times: but to men of enlightened minds it must appear a very idle and pitiful conceit. A Dr. Childrey endeavoured to account for the said phenomenon, by supposing the stream above to have been congealed by a sudden frost: but this also is very properly deemed untenable by the writers of the work above mentioned; and they assign, as the most probable cause, in their opinion, that the earth had suddenly sunk in some part of the channel, so as to form there a deep and capacious cavity, into which the waters flowed till it was filled up, leaving the channel below in the mean time nearly dry, so that people might then actually walk at the bottom, as the story asserts. This appears reasonable enough, and was probably the real case; but as it cannot be now very interesting there seems no need to investigate it any further. Dull and uninspiring, and in no sense classical ground, or a favourite haunt of the muses, as the banks of the Ouse have been generally, and perhaps justly considered, it must not be forgotten that they are become of late entitled to no small portion of celebrity, by the distinguished productions of the ingenious and excellent COWPER, one of the best, if not the very best of all our English poets of these latter days. He spent the greatest part of his time, and composed most of his works in the vicinity of this river. Henceforth it may therefore be deemed a classic stream: but it will be long, perhaps, before its banks shall have again the honour of numbering among their inhabitants a poet or a man of equal worth, genius, or renown. {9} Here it may be proper further to observe, that the Ouse did not always visit Lynn, or pass that way in its progress to the Ocean. In ancient times its course is said to have been by Wisbeach, to which that town probably owes its name: _Wis_, or _Wys_, being apparently but another name of the _Ouse_, and _Wisbeach_ the very same thing with _Ousebeach_, and signifying the beach, side, or bank of the Ouse; in other words, a place or town on the Shore and near the mouth of that river. {10}