Black Bess being undoubtedly the heroine of the Fourth Book of this
Romance, we may, perhaps, be pardoned for expatiating a little in this
place upon her birth, parentage, breeding, appearance, and attractions.
And first as to her pedigree; for in the horse, unlike the human
species, nature has strongly impressed the noble or ignoble caste. He is
the real aristocrat, and the pure blood that flows in the veins of the
gallant steed will infallibly be transmitted, if his mate be suitable,
throughout all his line. Bess was no _cock-tail_. She was thorough-bred;
she boasted blood in every bright and branching vein:

If blood can give nobility,
A noble steed was she;
Her sire was blood, and blood her dam,
And all her pedigree.

As to her pedigree. Her sire was a desert Arab, renowned in his day, and
brought to this country by a wealthy traveller; her dam was an English
racer, coal-black as her child. Bess united all the fire and gentleness,
the strength and hardihood, the abstinence and endurance of fatigue of
the one, with the spirit and extraordinary fleetness of the other. How
Turpin became possessed of her is of little consequence. We never heard
that he paid a heavy price for her; though we doubt if any sum would
have induced him to part with her. In color, she was perfectly black,
with a skin smooth on the surface as polished jet; not a single white
hair could be detected in her satin coat. In make she was magnificent.
Every point was perfect, beautiful, compact; modelled, in little, for
strength and speed. Arched was her neck, as that of the swan; clean and
fine were her lower limbs, as those of the gazelle; round and sound as a
drum was her carcase, and as broad as a cloth-yard shaft her width of
chest. Hers were the "_pulchrae clunes, breve caput, arduaque cervix_,"
of the Roman bard. There was no redundancy of flesh, 'tis true; her
flanks might, to please some tastes, have been rounder, and her
shoulders fuller; but look at the nerve and sinew, palpable through the
veined limbs! She was built more for strength than beauty, and yet she
_was_ beautiful. Look at that elegant little head; those thin, tapering
ears, closely placed together; that broad, snorting nostril, which seems
to snuff the gale with disdain; that eye, glowing and large as the
diamond of Giamschid! Is she not beautiful? Behold her paces! how
gracefully she moves! She is off!--no eagle on the wing could skim the
air more swif