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indisputable, nor to the works of interest and utility which have 
proceeded from his industry, and which are never likely to be 
forgotten or to remain unappreciated, but to bear my testimony to 
his general accomplishments, and to his high personal character. 
Of these I claim a right to speak, from an unbroken friendship of 
upwards of sixty years, varied by much vicissitude of events, much 
community of favourite studies, constant professional or official 
intercourse, and domestic familiarity of the warmest and most 
pleasing kind. 
Mr Innes was born on 9th September 1798. He was educated 
at the High School of Edinburgh, and at the University of Glasgow, 
from which last he proceeded on a Snell exhibition to Balliol 
College, Oxford. 
It is well known, and necessary to be remembered, that the 
position of Mr Innes’s family while he was yet a young man, came 
to be greatly affected by a misfortune that befell his father. Mr 
Innes, senior, who was a Writer to the Signet, was induced to give 
up business, and take a long lease of the estate of Durris, in Kin- 
cardineshire, upon which he expended great sums of money in 
improvements. But when the time approached for reaping the 
benefits of these, the lease was set aside, and the estate carried off 
by an heir of entail, leaving Mr Innes, senior, with a very slender 
equivalent for all the time and money he had thus expended. 
One good thing resulted from this calamity. It brought out 
the native courage and vigour of Mr Cosmo Innes’s character, and 
forced him to grapple manfully with his difficulties. His motto in 
such circumstances might well have been Tu ne cede malis ; sed 
contra audentior ito. He never sat down with a listless look or a 
desponding heart, but turned to the first opening he could find that 
promised an escape from trouble. And here, as she generally does, 
Fortune favoured the brave, and gave our friend both a stimulus 
and an opportunity for exertion that might not otherwise have 
existed. 
Another advantage that arose from the strong interest felt by all 
who saw his position, was that it excited the sympathy and atten- 
tion of many friends of great influence and value. Much the most 
important of these, and one who greatly moulded and affected his 
future career, was Mr Thomas Thomson, whose acquaintance he 
