Here we must note a curious coincidence. We have a chronicle written by another Andrea Navagero, sometimes quoted, but finished while the historian was a child. And likewise was there a second Marino Sanudo, called {322} Torsello, again the elder of the two, who wrote more than a century before the oft-quoted historian. This Sanudo Torsello wrote of the Crusades and of other matters more distinctly Venetian, and although sometimes quoted, is of little importance beside the younger man. In fact, the two elders, Navagero and Sanudo, serve principally to create a confusion by their names, and are of no special value in any direction. The younger Sanudo is very important among Venetian historians, and really began his researches when but nine years old. He was of a noble house, had all possible advantages of education and travel, was keen in his observations, and in a very sober manner makes many a humorous remark, like that one so often quoted: "If the story had not been true, our brave Venetians would not have painted it." When Marino was seventeen years old, his cousin Marco Sanudo was appointed one of the Syndics of Terra Firma, and took the young author with him to Padua. From this time he noted in his diaries all that came under his observation, and all he heard. He left, besides his voluminous published works, fifty-six volumes of these journals, many, if not all, of which are now published, and afford an almost momentary account of the life in Venice for a half-century before 1533. He collected a great library, and was active in his public life. He records his speeches in the Senate, and they were almost numberless. He held many important offices, and was extremely active in the discussions of all public matters in the Great Council as well as the Senate. He was usually in the minority; but that never discouraged him, and he more than once records his determination to "let no day pass without writing the news that comes from day to day, so that I may the better, accustoming myself to the strict truth, go on with my true history, which was begun several years ago. Seeking no eloquence of {323} composition, I will thus note down everything as it happens." He also records his determination "to do something in this age in honor of the eternal majesty and exaltation of the Venetian State, to which I can never fail, being born in that allegiance, for which I would die a thousand times if that could advantage my country, notwithstanding that I have been beaten, worn out, and evil entreated in her councils." And thus it resulted that his diaries became an unequalled storehouse of minute and general information, and it is largely to them that we owe that fascinating and curious information which admits us, so to speak, into the houses and palaces, the social gatherings, the august assemblies, even into the Council of Ten, and the innermost recesses of life in mediæval Venice.