The manner in which he has described the monuments is plain and appropriate, entirely free from those vague rhetorical flourishes, literary graces, and affected prettinesses with which, for example, Philostratus tricks out his descriptions of pictures, and which have consequently left it a matter of dispute to this day whether the pictures he describes existed anywhere but in his own imagination. No one is ever likely seriously to enquire whether the temples and theatres, the statues and paintings described by Pausanias ever existed or not. His descriptions carry the imprint of reality on them to every mind that is capable of distinguishing between the true and the false; and even if they did not, their truthfulness would still be vouched for by their conformity with the remains of the monuments themselves. Proof of this confirmity might be adduced in great abundance. Here, however, we are concerned with that internal evidence of the author’s honesty and candour which the writings themselves supply. Evidence of this sort can never, indeed, amount to demonstration. Candour and honesty are not qualities that can be brought to the test of the senses; they cannot be weighed in a balance or seen under a microscope. A man who is neither candid nor honest himself will probably never sincerely believe in the existence of these qualities in others, and there is no means of convincing him. It is always open to him to find a sinister motive for the simplest act, a covert meaning under the plainest words. In the case of Pausanias the internal evidence of good faith seems amply sufficient to convince a fair-minded enquirer. It consists in the whole cast and tenour of his writings; in the naturalness and credibility of all that he affirms of his own knowledge, with the exception of two or three cases in which he seems to have been duped by mercenary or priestly trickery; it consists in the plainness and directness of the descriptions; in their freedom from any tinge of rhetoric or sophistry; in the modesty with which the author generally keeps himself in the background; and finally in occasional confessions of ignorance which only malignity could interpret as artifices resorted to for the purpose of supporting an assumed air of ingenuous simplicity. This last feature of the work it is desirable to illustrate by instances. The others, pervading as they do the whole book, hardly admit of exemplification. [Sidenote: His confessions of ignorance.]