But great as their issues were to be, for the moment these protests only quickened the persecution at home. We can hardly wonder that the arrival of Goodman's book in England in the summer of 1558 was followed by stern measures to prevent the circulation of such incentives to revolt. "Whereas divers books" ran a royal proclamation, "filled with heresy, sedition, and treason, have of late and be daily brought into the realm out of foreign countries and places beyond seas, and some also covertly printed within this realm and cast abroad in sundry parts thereof, whereby not only God is dishonoured but also encouragement is given to disobey lawful princes and governors," any person possessing such books "shall be reported and taken for a rebel, and shall without delay be executed for that offence according to the order of martial law." But what really robbed these pamphlets of all force for harm was the prudence and foresight of the people itself. Never indeed did the nation show its patient good sense more clearly than in the later years of Mary's reign. While fires blazed in Smithfield and news of defeat came from over sea, while the hot voices of Protestant zealots hounded men on to assassination and revolt, the bulk of Englishmen looked quietly from the dying Queen to the girl who in a little while must wear her crown. What nerved men to endure the shame and bloodshed about them was the certainty of the speedy succession of the daughter of Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth was now in her twenty-fifth year. Personally she had much of her mother's charm with more than her mother's beauty. Her figure was commanding, her face long but queenly and intelligent, her eyes quick and fine. She had grown up amidst the liberal culture of Henry's court a bold horsewoman, a good shot, a graceful dancer, a skilled musician, and an accomplished scholar. Even among the highly-trained women who caught the impulse of the New Learning she stood in the extent of her acquirements without a peer. Ascham, who succeeded Grindal and Cheke in the direction of her studies, tells us how keen and resolute was Elizabeth's love of learning, even in her girlhood. At sixteen she already showed "a man's power of application" to her books. She had read almost the whole of Cicero and a great part of Livy. She began the day with the study of the New Testament in Greek, and followed this up by reading selected orations of Isocrates and the tragedies of Sophocles. She could speak Latin with fluency and Greek moderately well. Her love of classical culture lasted through her life. Amidst the press and cares of her later reign we find Ascham recording how "after dinner I went up to read with the Queen's majesty that noble oration of Demosthenes against AEschines." At a later time her Latin served her to rebuke the insolence of a Polish ambassador, and she could "rub up her rusty Greek" at need to bandy pedantry with a Vice-Chancellor. But Elizabeth was far as yet from being a mere pedant.