Letter from Charles Dickens, Lausanne, to Angela Burdett-Coutts, 1846 July 25 : autograph manuscript signed.

Concerning her desire to establish an Institution to aid women and setting forth his opinions of the idea's merits; explaining that the Pentonville Society already exists and does what she is hoping to do and suggesting that she find out more about what similar institutions are doing before she creates a new one; asking several questions pertaining to the location and qualifications for admission; defending his ideas and addressing specifically the question of marriage as a goal for the inmates and the issues surrounding temptation: "As to Marriage. I do not propose to put that before them as the immediate end and object to be gained, but assuredly to keep it in view as the possible consequence of a sincere, true, practical repentance, and an altered life [...] With regard to Temptation. I would simply ask you to consider whether we do not, all of us, in our stations, tempt our fellow creatures at every turn. Where there is a merchant in London, who does not hourly expose his servants to strong temptation. Whether a night or morning ever comes,when you do not tempt your butler with a hundred times the worth of his year's wages [...] And whether it is not a Christian act to say to such unfortunate creatures as you purpose, by God's blessing, to reclaim 'Test for yourselves the reality of your repentance and your power of resisting temptation, while you are here, and before you are in the World outside, to fall before it!'"; relating an anecdote about a Duke and the magazine Punch; explaining that he has no influence at Punch: "I never wrote, or stayed the writing, of a word in Punch, and am not in the least degree in his confidence or councils."