According to his ‘Journal of my Conduct’, Robert Heronspent the afternoon of Saturday 30 January 1790 onEdinburgh's Blackford Hill. He was reading theautobiographical anecdotes and observations of hisfavourite writer: Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Reveries of a SolitaryWalker (1782). It was, according toHeron's diary, ‘An ill spent day!’ He should havebeen getting on with various poorly paid translationjobs for Bell & Bradfute.

Heron's ‘Journal’ also elucidates the context for his1792 tour of Scotland, and for the publication, in1793, of his Observations Madein a Journey Through the Western Counties ofScotland. In the Journey, Heron expresses ambiguousfeelings about ‘improvement’ that typify both aconventional Enlightenment optimism about theprogress of urban civilisation and a romantic lament for a lost ruralinnocence. This travel account, which begins andends in Edinburgh, reveals much about how the city'sgeographies were understood, and how its externalconnections were constructed and construed. Thecontext of its production, revealed in the ‘Journal’and in the booksellers’ records, was intellectual,literary, financial and professional – but it wasalso deeply personal and emotional. He saw travel asa means to improve ‘the feelings of the heart’. Itwas not about discovering new geographicalinformation, or piecing together an overview of thenation, or producing a useful guide for othertravellers; rather, Heron's travels andtravel-writing style were about deepening apsychological and emotional subject's relationshipwith places of personal significance.

This chapter analyses Heron's Journey in relation to a Romanticismanticipated by the likes of Rousseau and representedin Scotland by some of Heron's personalacquaintances, most notably Henry Mackenzie(1745–1831), author of the sentimental novel The Man of Feeling (1771),and the poet Robert Burns (1759–1796). ScottishRomanticism was a set of cultural and intellectualprocesses associated with a prioritisation ofindividuals’ emotional responses and a concern withnational cultural identity. It was also concernedwith questions of national improvement. AlexBenchimol and Gerard McKeever have emphasised the‘collision’ and ‘long, evolving imbrication’ ofScottish Enlightenment with Scottish Romanticism inthe long eighteenth century, especially in relationto what they call ‘cultures of improvement’, andespecially in the south-west, where Heron was fromand most focused his attention.