The office of “queen’s falconer” yet exists, and it is written in a certain little black book, that the duties attached to it, however imaginary, receive substantial acknowledgement from the public purse in the form of an annual stipend of no mean amount. Another recreation peculiarly associated with the memory of knights and dames once tenanting the feudal castle is the tournament, the site of whose gorgeous pageantries yet bears the title of the “Gilden croft,” though the lustre of the name is the only ray of splendour bequeathed to it as an inheritance of glory. Centuries have witnessed the mutations of the properties of the great ones of the land, as they have gradually passed down through the various gradations of society like cast-off garments, until the once brilliant lists of the gay tournament have changed to long tiers of poverty tenanted “_right ups_;” the music of the herald’s trumpet has been replaced by the rattle of the shuttle and the loom; and the steel-clad knights and esquires, with their tiltings and joustings, amid the smiles and favours of youth and beauty, have given place to the struggles of the weaver and the winder in their weary battle of life, for the guerdon of daily bread. Where, Edward and Phillippa held their Easter tournament, and their gallant son, the brave Black Prince, displayed his knightly prowess amid splendours that might rival the “field of the cloth of gold,” poverty, hard labour, and penury now rear their gaunt limbs; and the tale of the “Paramatta weaver” is breathed forth to the listening ear of humanity from its precincts. But the tournament demands attention, inwrought as it is with every conception we may form of the days of chivalry; and, thanks to the patient researches of many chroniclers, we have not much difficulty in learning all we may desire to know concerning these glories of an age gone by. Fiction has given life and vigour to these features of past history. Ivanhoe lives and breathes before us at the mention of a tournament, and plain prose facts may not vie with the glowing pictures, painted with imagination’s rainbow hues. The tournament was not altogether the play-ground of full-grown knights and esquires, as romance would sometimes tend to show it;—it was the theatre on which many an important drama of life was played; it was a grand field for introduction into military life, then the only life deemed worthy the ambition of a gentleman; and the laws and regulations to which all who presented themselves as candidates for honours became subject, bespeak the importance attached to the favours it conferred.