At the same time he neglected neither his duties nor his studies. While with Hirsch he acquired the English language, and finding some Syriac books in the rabbi’s library, he began to devote himself to Syriac. The study of the former language his master seems to have encouraged, but not of the latter. Hirsch met his disciple with uniform kindness, and returned his enthusiastic devotion with fatherly benevolence. Graetz was treated as a member of his family. In the third year of his Oldenburg sojourn, his relations with the mistress of the house were disturbed by slight discords, such as cannot fail to arise in long-continued, familiar intercourse, and tend now to strengthen, now to abridge intimacy. With Graetz’s proud sense of independence they finally sufficed to ruffle the tranquillity of a soul wholly absorbed by the present. Anxiety about his future began to disquiet him. The desire to decide definitely upon a career and the longing to see his parents, who in the meantime had removed from Zerkow to Kosten near Posen, a somewhat larger town, united to make his departure from Oldenburg seem advisable. III. THE JOURNEYMAN. The adieux were said with touching cordiality, and after an absence of more than three years Graetz set his face homeward, and arrived in Kosten in the middle of August, 1840. The younger people everywhere received Hirsch’s disciple with joyous welcome, and induced him to preach at Wollstein, Kosten, and Zerkow. His sermons, to be sure, did not transport his audiences with enthusiasm, but they were ample guarantees of the preacher’s fund of knowledge and originality. All his friends, therefore, agreed, that it would be advisable for Graetz to “study,” in the technical sense of the German word, that is, go through the university and obtain a degree. They adduced the fact that the smaller congregations at least, such as Wreschen, Wollstein, and Kosten, in part had appointed “graduate rabbis” (_studirte Rabbiner_), in part had resolved to fill their rabbinates with them.