The precincts of Bedlam

"As for the orchestra, the vocal musick especially, it is well for the performers that they cannot be heard distinctly ... when they course along those damp and gloomy walks, or crowd together upon the wet gravel, without any other cover but the cope of Heaven, listening to a song, which one half of them cannot possibly hear, how can I help supposing they are actually possessed by a spirit, more pernicious than any thing we meet in the precincts of Bedlam?"

-Tobias Smollett, The Expedition Of Humphry Clinker