Year of publication inferred from content and related correspondence. Ruskin stopped at Kenmure Castle in Scotland on September 30 in 1883 on his way back from a visit to Walter Scott's house at Abbotsford. Ruskin refers to an upcoming trip to Oxford that he made at the end of October 1883, during his final stint as Slade Professor of Art, before resigning his professorship in 1884.
Written on printed letterhead stationery reading: Brantwood, / Coniston, Lancashire.
William Gifford Palgrave, then serving in the British Foreign Office, was one of Ruskin's regular correspondents between 1883 and Palgrave's death in 1888.
This letter indicates that Ruskin intended to compare the history of Wahhabism in Islam with the history of Puritanism in Christianity in his projected, but never completed, history of Christendom, to be titled Our Fathers Have Told Us.
Ruskin could not answer Palgrave's delightful note until today, because he was lost in the bush above Traqhuair [Traquair, Scotland]. But he hopes to get a glimpse of Palgrave before too long. He must be up at Oxford before the end of next month, and it would be lovely to arrange for a chat at Froude's [the historian James Anthony Froude]. He had been compiling the history of Telal [Talal bin Abdullah, ruler of the Emirate of Ha'il, whose career is described in Palgrave's 1866 Narrative of a Year's Journey Through Central and Eastern Arabia], when Palgrave's sorrowful answer to his inquiry saddened and stopped him. "But the relation of that Wahhabee [Wahhabi] sect to our Puritans" must be dwelt on in the book that Ruskin is now bringing about [the never-completed history of Christendom that Ruskin was then planning, to be titled Our Fathers Have Told Us]. He can only hope to do so intelligently with the help that a very few minutes of chat would give him, though he would be pleased with all he could get of Palgrave. Ruskin says that he will write again when he gets to Oxford.