But I will _test_ (as an American would say,—though let it be observed in passing that I do not _advocate_ the use of Americanisms.) I will _test_ Mr. Campbell's assertion. And as the Lord President of the New Monthly Magazine has not favored the world with the calculations upon which his assertion, if his it be, is founded, I will investigate it, step by step, with which intent I have this morning, Saturday, May the fifteenth, 1830, minuted myself during the act of shaving. The time employed was, within a second or two more or less, nine minutes. I neither hurried the operation, nor lingered about it. Every thing was done in my ordinary orderly way, steadily, and without waste of time. Now as to my beard, it is not such a beard as that of Domenico d'Ancona, which was _delle barbe la corona_, that is to say the crown of beards, or rather in English idiom the king. _Una barba la più singulare Che mai fosse discritta in verso o'n prosa,_ A beard the most unparallell'd That ever was yet described in prose or rhyme, and of which Berni says that the Barber ought to have felt less reluctance in cutting the said Domenico's throat, than in cutting off so incomparable a beard. Neither do I think that mine ever by possibility could vie with that of Futteh Ali Shah, King of Persia at this day: nay, I doubt whether Macassar Oil, Bear's grease, Elephant's marrow, or the approved recipe of sour milk with which the Persians cultivate their beards, could ever bring mine to the far inferior growth of his son's, Prince Abbas Mirza. Indeed no Mussulmen would ever look upon it, as they did upon Mungo Park's, with envious eyes, and think that it was too good a beard for a Christian. But for a Christian and moreover an Englishman, it is a sufficient beard; and for the individual a desirable one: _nihil me pœnitet hujus barbæ_; desirable I say, inasmuch as it is in thickness and rate of growth rather below the average standard of beards. Nine minutes therefore will be about the average time required for shaving, by a Zebedeean,—one who shaves himself. A professional operator makes quicker work; but he cannot be always exactly to the time, and at the year's end as much may have been lost in waiting for the barber, as is gained by his celerity of hand.